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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

THE McEWEN COLLECTION 

OF SHAKESPEAREANA 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 




rHA'£W 



SHAKESPEARE'S 
COUNTRY 

By 
BERTRAM C • A WINDLE 

F.R.S., D.SC, F.S.A. 

Illustrated by 
EDMUND • H • NEW 



Hie domus ilia fuit, cycno fundata sonoro, 
Cujus vox ultra Gangen audita Tagumque 
Dulcibus impievit vastum concentibus orbem 



BOSTON 
C. PAGE & COMPANY 

LONDON 

METHUEN & CO 

MDCCCXCIX 



To 
JAMES R. HOLLIDAY 

B.C.A.W. E.H.N. 

April 1899. 



PREFACE 

T^HIS little book is intended rather as a me- 
morial of places and objects seen by visitors 
to Shakespeare's Country, with some account of 
their history, than as a Guide-Book, though, it 
is hoped, that, even in this capacity, it may be 
found to have its uses. To call the attention 
of visitors to all places even legendarily associated 
with Shakespeare has been one of its principal 
purposes, and hence allusion has been made to 
tales and surmises respecting the poet which it 
must frankly be admitted rest upon no very 
certain foundation of fact. It has been thought 
better to err, if it is an error, on this side, than 
on that of exclusion, and due warning has been 
given in the text of the doubtful paths. 

The writer has to express his acknowledg- 
ments to many works dealing with the subject. 
Dugdale*s great History is a well at which all 
writers on Warwickshire must drink, and in 
addition should be mentioned Sharpens "Cov- 
entry," Beasley's " Banbury," Snowden Ward's 
" Shakespeare's Town and Times," and Ribton- 



PREFACE 

Turner's "Shakespeare- Land/' the last a Guide, 
and a most detailed one, almost to the whole 
county. Finally, Mr Sidney Lee's recent book 
on Shakespeare must not be left unmentioned. 
To Mr Salt Brassington of the Memorial Library, 
Stratford, and Mr Jethro A. Cossins, who have 
read through the manuscript and given the author 
many valuable suggestions, his best thanks are 
most warmly given. Need the writer say how 
greatly Mr New's drawings enhance the value 
of what is otherwise mostly a twice-told tale ? 

Birmingham, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Stratford-on-Avon-The Forest of 
Arden - History of the Shakes- 
peare Family-The Birthplace -Olq 
Houses -New Place . . . i 

II. Stratford-on-Avon (continued) -The 
Guild Chapel -The Guild Hall and 
Grammar School-The Church-The 
Memorial -Portraits of Shakespeare 23 

III. Villages near Stratford-on-Avon 
associated with Shakespeare- S hot- 
ter y - Wilnecote - Aston C antlow - 
Snitterfield-Luddington-Billesley 

- Charlecote - Clopton - Grafton - 
The eight Villages . . '47 

IV. Further Villages of the District 

- Clifford Chambers - Henley-in- 
Arden-Wootton Wawen-Alcester 

- Coughton - Evesham - Broadway - 
Chipping Camden-Welford-Abbot's 
Salford . . . . -63 

ix 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V. Warwick-The Castle-St Michael's 
Church - St John's Hospital - St 
Mary's Church . . . -83 

VI. Warwick [continued) -The Leycester 
Hospital-The School- Leamington 

- Guy's Cliff . . . .111 

vn. Kenilworth - The Castle - The 
Church - The Priory Remains - 
Stoneleigh . . . . .125 

viii. Coventry-History of the City and 

its Guilds . . . . • 1 5 5 

IX. Coventry - St Mary's Hall - St 
Michael's Church - Holy Trinity 
Church- Remains of the Cathedral 

- Christ Church - Bablake - Bond's 
and Ford's Almshouses - White 
Friars 177 

X. Edgehill - The Battle - Compton 

WyN YATES . . . . '199 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 







PAGE 


Map of District 


Front Cover v^ 


Stratford Church . 


Frontispiece y 


Shakespeare's House 




13 V 


The Latin School . 




28- 


Shakespeare's Monument . 




34 "• 


Anne Hathaway's Cottage 




46. 


Charlecote 




54 


Evesham Bell Tower 




70. 


Warwick Castle 




82 V 


Leycester Hospital, Warwick 




III 


Kenilworth Castle . 




125. 


The Three Spires, Coventry 




155V 


Ford's Almshouses, Coventry 




177-/ 


Edgehill, Plan of the Battle- 


•FlELE 


) 199 


CoMPTON WyNYATES . 




209 „ 



NOTE 

Most of the drawings are made from photographs 
by Messrs F. D. Bedford, Frith, Poulton, Valentine &; 
Whitlock (Birmingham). 

xi 



CHAPTER I 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

THE FOREST OF ARDEN -SHAKESPEARE AND HIS FAMILY 
-THE BIRTHPLACE -OLD HOUSES IN STRATFORD- 
NEW PLACE 

JN the time of Queen Elizabeth the County of 
Warwick was divided into an open pastoral 
tract lying between the Avon and the Cotswolds, 
known as the Feldon, and a much more closely 
wooded part north of the river, the Wooland. 
The latter, now broken up by farms and villages, 
was the remains of the huge forest of Arden, 
which at an earlier date covered all the country 
between the Avon on the south and Watling 
Street on the north. To the fastnesses of this 
almost impenetrable forest fled bands of the 
Britons, fugitive before the faces of their Saxon 
adversaries, and here, sheltered by its intricate 
and dark valleys, they succeeded in maintaining 
their independence long after others of their 
kindred had succumbed to the foreign yoke. It 
is thus not wonderful that the district in question 
should contain many places and objects, such as 
the river Avon itself, with Celtic names, and 
that its inhabitants should have a strong infusion 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

of Celtic blood in their veins. Indeed, there 
are those who argue that the influence of the 
poetic and imaginative nature of the Celt stands 
for much in the character of Shakespeare, who 
may well have had ancestors belonging to the 
older and conquered race. At the time that 
the poet lived in Stratford the Wooland, though 
possessed of pastures and cornfields here and 
there, was yet, as Camden says, in the main 
clothed with woods and must have closely re- 
sembled the older parts of the New Forest as 
we now know them. It is the iron-works which 
have given prosperity and greatness to Birming- 
ham and the adjacent towns of the Black 
Country, and the salt-works at Droitwich, which 
have been responsible for the clearance of 
the Wooland. Gibson, writing in 1753, says 
that the iron- works had " destroyed such pro- 
digious quantities of wood that they laid the 
country more open and by degrees made room 
for the plough," so that " whereas within the 
memory of man they were supplied with corn 
from the Feldon," they now grew more than 
they required. 

On the edge of the old boundary of the Wooland 
lies the little town of Stratford-on-Avon. 

A place of some little importance before the 
Conquest, it possessed a monastery founded in the 
reign of Ethelred, which appears to have been 
situated on or near the site of the present church. 
The later history of the town is not of a very 
striking character. Richard the First granted 
the inhabitants a weekly market in 1197. Dur- 
2 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

ing the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and again in 
1814 large parts of the town were destroyed by 
fire. In 1642, during the Civil War, the Royal- 
ist garrison was driven out by Parliamentary 
troops under the command of Lord Brooke. 
The inhabitants, however, in spite of this reverse, 
remained faithful to the Royalist cause, and in the 
following year. Queen Henrietta Maria with a 
considerable band of troops, met Prince Rupert 
there. During her stay of three days in the 
town, the Queen was entertained at New Place 
by Shakespeare's daughter, Mrs Hall. At a 
later date the Parliamentary forces having again 
obtained possession of the town, destroyed one 
of the arches of the bridge which spanned the 
deepest part of the river, in order to prevent further 
advances on the part of the Royalist troops. 

None of these facts, however, would have 
given to Stratford any special pre-eminence 
amongst a multitude of other towns of its own 
size, and possessed of equal or superior attrac- 
tions, natural, architectural, or historical. The 
interest which it excites is of course due to its 
close connection with the life of England's 
greatest son, and the crowds which visit it annu- 
ally are attracted by the desire of seeing the 
scenes amidst which he passed so large a part of 
his existence. 

The incidents connected with the residence of 
the Shakespeare family in Stratford have often been 
detailed, but must be once more summarised here. 

Richard (such traditionally is the name) 
Shakespeare of Warwickshire, possibly of Snit- 

3 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

terfieJd, close to Stratford, was possessed of lands 
and tenements in the county, which were, accord- 
ing to the statement made in the grant of arms to 
John Shakespeare, given to him for " his faithful 
and approved service to the most prudent prince, 
King Henry VII. of famous memory." He 
had at least two sons, Henry and John, and the 
last-mentioned was the father of the poet. Born 
about 1530, John Shakespeare was certainly 
resident in Henley Street, Stratford, prior to 
April 29th, 1552, where he plied the trade of a 
fell-monger and glover, perhaps also that of a 
butcher, and certainly at times dealt in corn and 
timber. In October 1556 he bought the copy- 
hold of a house and garden and other property 
in Greenhill Street. In the following year he 
married Mary Arden, daughter of Robert 
Arden of Aston Cauntlow or Cantlow, anciently 
Cantilupe (see p. 49) who left her a small estate 
in that parish named Asbies as well as certain 
reversionary rights at Snitterfield (see p. 50). 
In this year also he became a member of the 
Corporation of Stratford to which a charter of 
incorporation had been granted in 1553. The 
further events of his life may now be set down 
chronologically. 

1558, Sept. 15, his daughter Joan was baptised. 
She probably died in 1 560. 

1 56 1. He became chamberlain of the town. 

1562, Dec. 2nd, his daughter Margaret was 
baptised. She died on the 30th of April 
in the following year. 

4 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

1564. His son William was born. The exact 
day of his birth is unknown, for, as in the 
case of the other children, the only recorded 
date is that of the baiptism, which in the 
case of the poet took place on the 26th of 
April. A constant tradition assigns Shake- 
speare's birth to St George's day, April 
23rd. As this was according to the old 
style, it would correspond to our 5th of 
May. It is highly probable that the tradi- / 
tion is accurate and that the day mentioned ' 
is actually that of William Shakespeare's 
birth, for it was then customary that 
children should be brought to baptism at 
the earliest possible date after their entry 
into the world. 

1565. John Shakespeare was made an alderman 
of Stratford. 

I 566. His son Gilbert was baptised on the 13th 
of October. In this year the name of John 
Shakespeare appears as surety for Richard 
Hathaway. 

1568. He became high-bailiff of the town. 

1569. Joan, a second daughter of the same 
name, was baptised April 15th. 

I 57 1. He became senior alderman of Stratford. 
This was the highest civic dignity which 
the town had to bestow ; it entitled its 
possessor to the honourable title of Magister 
during and after his tenure of office, and 
such a designation we find him described 
by in the parish registers of this and sub- 
sequent dates. In the same year a 

5 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

daughter, Anne, was baptised on the 28th 

of September. 
1573. A son Richard was baptised on the i ith 

of March. 
1575. He purchased the house in Henley Street, 

now known as the birthplace (see p. 13) 

from Edmund Hall, at the price of ,^40. 

1578. From this year his reverses commence. 
He was obliged to mortgage Asbies, the 
property which came to him with his wife, 
and also to sell his reversionary interest in 
the lands at Snitterfield. He appears to 
have ceased to attend the meetings of the 
Town Council and even had his taxes re- 
mitted. 

1579. His daughter Anne buried on July 4th. 

1580. A son, Edmund, baptised on May 3rd. 
After this date his name appears in several 
lists of recusants, from which it has been 
argued that he may have professed the 
proscribed Catholic religion, and that his 
troubles may have arisen from this cause. 

1585. He was deprived of his aldermanship for 
non-attendance at the meetings of the Town 
Council. " He doth not come to the 
halles nor hath he of long time " runs the 
record. 

1592. In this year his troubles seem to have 
reached their maximum since we learn that 
he cannot come to church for fear of " pro- 
cesse of debt." 

1597. There is a distinct improvement in his 
affairs, probably due to the success of his 
6 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

son. In any case that " the winter of his 
discontent " was passing over is shown by 
the fact that we find him filing a bill in the 
Court of Chancery against John Lambert, 
son of Edmund Lambert, to whom the 
estate of Asbies had been mortgaged in 
1578, for its recovery, the Shakespeare 
•side stating, that though they had tendered 
the money for the release of the mortgage, 
the property was still unjustly withheld from 
them. Moreover, as a further proof of 
prosperity, a grant of arms is made to him 
by Dethick, Garter King at Arms. The 
arms are described as "gold on a bend 
sable, a spear of the first, the point steeled 
proper, and for his crest or cognizance a 
falcon his wings displayed argent standing 
on a wreath of his colours supporting a 
spear, gold steeled as aforesaid set upon a 
helmet with mantles and tassels." The 
motto used by the poet was " Non sanz 
droict." 
1 60 1. In this year the name of Mr John Sacke- 
spere, who was probably the man with 
whom we are now concerned, appears in 
connection with an action for trespass, 
apparently as a witness, and the line in the 
burial register of Stratford — 

" 1 601, Sept. 8, Mr Johanes Shakspeare," 

is the last record of a life in which success and 
failure had alternated in a somewhat remarkable 
manner. It has been necessary to deal in some 

7 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

detail with the occurrences of John Shakespeare's 
life, since he was associated so closely through- 
out its three-score or more years with Stratford- 
on-Avon. In the case of the poet, it will not 
be necessary to enter at length into an account 
of his life, but such points in it as touch the town 
must not pass without notice. 

William Shakespeare, then, was born in the 
house in Henley Street, probably on the 23rd of 
April (o.s.) 1564. It is ^Dbahk that in 1571, 
the year, by the way, in which Roger Ascham's 
book, " The Schoolmaster," saw the light, he 
was sent as perhaps an unwilling schoolboy to 
the Grammar School originally founded in 1482 
by Thomas Jolyffe. That he was at some time 
a scholar at this school there can be no reason- 
able doubt, and there he must have had instilled 
into him the "small Latin and less Greek," 
which Ben Jonson assigns to him as intellectual 
possessions. During his boyhood, in 1575, the 
Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth 
at Kenilworth, many gorgeous pageajQts being 
presented for her amusement. To these, no 
doubt, the populace of the adjoining districts 
would flock in large numbers, and since Kenil- 
worth is only thirteen miles from Stratford, it 
is quite possible, as Percy in his " Reliques " 
originally suggested, that Shakespeare and his 
father may have been amongst these spectators, 
and that here the former may have first made 
acquaintance with the stage, over which he was 
afterwards to reign as its undisputed king. 
Leaving, however, the region of conjecture for 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

that of fact, in 1582 we come to the record 
contained in his marriage bond, discovered by 
Sir Thomas PhiHps in the Worcester Registry 
in 1836. In this bond, which is dated 28th 
of November 1582, Fulk Sandells and John 
Richardson, farmers, of Stratford, become bound 
in ^40, " that William Shagspere, one thone 
partie, and Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the 
dioces of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solem- 
nize marriage together." This document also 
bears a seal with the inscription R.H., which 
ma^ signify Richard Hathaway, the bride's 
father, and indicate his approval of the match. 
If, as some hold, Richard Hathaway had died 
before 1582, this explanation of the seal would 
fall to the ground. Where the marriage took 
place is not known, some persons considering 
that it was probably at Luddington, whilst Mr 
Ribton-Turner adduces evidence which leads 
him to believe that Temple Grafton was the 
selected spot. However this may be, the wed- 
ding must have taken place somewhere about this 
time, for in the next year the Stratford register 
contains the entry of the baptism of his first 
child, as one born in wedlock, 

" 1583, May 26th, Susannah, daughter to William 
Shakspere." 

At this time, it may be well to remind our- 
selves, the father was a little more than nineteen 
years of age and the mother twenty-six. What 
his occupation may have been in Stratford dur- 
ing this period, or how he gained the money for 
the support of his family, is not known, the next 

9 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

tangible fact which we possess concerning him 
being the entry of the birth of twins in 1585, 
for in that year, 

"February 2, Hamnet and Judith, sonne and daughter 
to William Shakespere," 

were baptised in Stratford Church. It was 
about this time that Shakespeare seems_to have 
removed to London, the year at which we have 
now arrived and the next having been variously 
assigned as the date of that event. Whether, as 
some maintain, this was due to increased ex- 
penses from his increased family and from a 
natural desire to improve his position in life, or 
whether, as the old legend relates and as some 
still believe, it was in consequence of a poaching 
affray in Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlecote, 
cannot now be decided. According to Mr 
Fleay, it was in 1587 that Shakespeare joined 
Lord Leicester's players during or shortly after 
the visit which they made to Stratford in that 
year, when their performances would have taken 
place in the old Guild Hall still in existence. 
This is, however, a mere supposition, though 
perhaps a plausible one, for there is neither any 
known fact nor any definite tradition which 
points to the conclusion that Shakespeare left his 
home because he had decided to enter upon a 
dramatic career. In the last-mentioned year the 
name of Shakespeare is found joined with that 
of his father in a bond, which attempted to 
assign the Asbies property to the mortgagee. 
From this date until 1 596 there is no indication 
of any connection between the poet and his 
10 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

native town, but in that year the Stratford 
register contains the entry of the burial of his 
only son, 

" 1596, August nth, Hamnet, filius William 
Shakespere," 

on which occasion the father may have been 
present. At any rate it is an indication that the 
son and probably the remainder of the family 
had been resicient in Stratford about this time. 

In the next year, 1597, he became a land- 
holder in his native town by the purchase from 
one " William Underbill, gentleman," of " one 
messuage, two barns, two gardens, and two 
orchards, with appurtenances, in Stratford-upon- 
Avon," for which he paid "to the aforesaid 
William sixty pounds sterling." The house on 
this property had been erected, in the reign of 
Henry VII., by Sir Hugh Clopton, and was 
known as the Great House, but Shakespeare on 
entering into possession of it gave it the name of 
New Place, by which its site, for unfortunately 
its site and traces of its foundations alone now 
remain, is still known. 

About this time evidences of Shakespeare's 
material prosperity and of his connection with 
Stratford accumulate, for we find, in 1598, that 
Richard Quiney, engaged in negotiating a loan 
for the corporation of the town, applied to him 
for assistance, whilst the records of succeeding 
years show him to have been the purchaser of 
other portions of land in or near Stratford. In 
1607 his elder daughter, Susannah, married Dr 
II 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

John Hall, a leading physician in Stratford, and in 
the following year Elizabeth, the issue of this 
marriage and Shakespeare's first grandchild, was 
born. She subsequently married Thomas Nash 
in 1626, and, as a second husband. Sir John 
Barnard in 1649. ^^^ ^^^^ without children 
in 1670, being then the last descendant of the 
poet. In 16 1 6 Judith, his second daughter, 
married Thomas Quiney, who occupied the 
position of a vintner in her native town. From 
this union sprang three children, two of whom 
survived to manhood, but in both cases died 
without leaving issue. Their mother died some 
time after the restoration of Charles II. " The 
latter part of his life," says Rowe, his first bio- 
grapher, in treating of his life in Stratford, " was 
spent, as all men of sense may wish theirs may 
be, in some retirement, and the conversation of 
his friends. His pleasurable wit and good-nature 
engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled 
him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the 
neighbourhood." In March 16 16, the month 
after the marriage of his younger daughter, he 
became ill, made his will, and on April 23 rd, 
that being the supposed anniversary of his birth- 
day, he died, and was buried on the 25th. It 
will be seen from this brief summary that the 
life of the poet, of his parents, and of his de- 
scendants, was remarkably bound up with that of 
the town in which they lived. It is this close- 
ness of connection between the man and the spot 
which makes the latter so full of interest and so 
replete with places associated with the incidents 
12 




JiDUse 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

of Shakespeare's life. It will now be our busi- 
ness to describe these places, and to indicate 
their connection with the poet, a task which will 
be rendered lighter by the summary which has 
just been given. 

The visitor to Stratford will do well to direct 
his steps, in the first instance, to the birthplace, 
which is situated in Henley Street. The history 
of the purchase of this property by Shakespeare's 
father has already been given. After the death 
of John Shakespeare it is probable that this 
house was occupied by the poet's mother, and 
on her death in 1608 by his sister, Joan Hart. 
To the latter, in any case, it was left for life by 
the poet's will, and she continued to occupy it 
until her death in 1646. Shakespeare's eldest 
daughter, Susannah Hail, who was already by 
her father's will the owner of the adjoining 
wool-shop, then came into possession of the 
dwelHng-house, and from her it descended to 
her daughter. Lady Barnard. It is unnecessary 
to trace minutely the later owners of the house, 
let it suffice to add that in 1784 the birthplace 
became a butcher's shop, with open market-stall, 
the bay windows and porch having been re- 
moved. The wool-shop appears to have become 
an inn, under the name of the Maidenhead, in 
1603. Later on it was known as the Swan 
and Maidenhead, and in 1808 its timber front 
was faced with brickwork. In 1847 the 
houses were bought for the nation by a com- 
mittee, and in 1857-8 they were carefully 
restored and placed as far as possible in the 

13 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

condition in which they existed during the 
lifetime of the poet. 

The principal living room of the house is 
entered directly from the street ; it is stone- 
paved and provided with a recessed fire-place 
of the old type. A similar fire-place is in the 
kitchen, the mantel of which is formed by a 
single oak beam. On one side there is a small 
cupboard, on the other a recess for a seat. Two 
small rooms behind the kitchen are called the 
wash-house and the pantry respectively. Up- 
stairs the room of greatest interest is naturally 
the birth-room, which, being the principal bed- 
chamber of the house, must have been peculiarly 
associated with the history of the Shakespeare 
family, for here not only did the poet first see 
the light of day, but in all probability his brothers 
and sisters were also born. Moreover, as bed- 
rooms are fated to see the endings as well as the 
beginnings of life, it was most probably in this 
room that Shakespeare's father and mother and 
sister, Mrs Hart, ended their days. 

The windows of this room are of old glass, 
and they and the walls and ceiling are covered 
with myriads of names, which were scratched 
and written thereon before this practice was very 
properly forbidden. Out of this evil habit, 
however, has proceeded some little good, for 
it is possible for the visitor to decipher amongst 
thousands of names of no interest, except to 
their possessors, those of Sir Walter Scott, 
Izaak Walton, and Thomas Carlyle. A room 
at the back of this, which formerly formed two 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

bedrooms, contains one of the portraits of the 
poet — a portrait, however, as to the genuineness 
of which there is the gravest doubt. This 
picture is believed to have originally belonged 
to the Clopton family, from whose possession 
it passed into that of the family of Hunt. At 
this time the face was disfigured by a beard, the 
addition of some later artist. This was cleaned 
off, and the picture presented to the house by 
Mr Hunt. Here also are two of the old sign- 
boards which, in former days, hung outside the 
house, with the inscription : 

" The immortal Shakespeare was born in this house." 

There was also an attic, approached by a 
narrow staircase, from this part of the house. 
Descending to the ground floor, the former 
wool-store, now converted into a museum, full 
of the most miscellaneous objects connected in 
some way or another with Shakespeare and his 
native town, will next be entered. It is neither 
possible nor advisable to enumerate all the 
objects contained in this part of the building, 
but the following must not pass without notice. 
In the lower part of the museum is the desk at 
which, as tradition declares, Shakespeare as a 
boy used to sit at the Grammar School, whence 
it was removed to its present location some years 
ago. Here also in the central case are a sword, 
said to have belonged to the poet, and a ring 
with the letters W and S intertwined with a 
knot on the bezel, also said to have been his 
property. The sign of the Falcon tavern at 

15 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Bidford, with which the name of Shakespeare 
has been so freely, though perhaps unjustly, 
associated, is also in this room. There is, how- 
ever, scant excuse for its presence, since this 
sign, being a work of the last century, was not 
contemporaneous with the most celebrated guest 
of the hostelry which it adorned. A number 
of deeds, connected with purchases and other 
matters, belonging to the poet and his family 
are here preserved. In the upper part of the 
room is an old carved chair, which came from 
the Falcon at Bidford, where it was, according 
to an old tradition, the favourite seat of the 
poet when he visited that inn. A letter of the 
highest interest, since it is the only one addressed 
to the poet known to be in existence, will be 
seen between two sheets of glass. It is of a 
class known to all prosperous men, and to many 
others whose claim to be so considered is of the 
slightest, namely, a begging letter from Richard 
Quyney, dated 1598, asking for a loan of ^30. 
The portraits in this room are numerous and 
interesting. They include the following repre- 
sentation of the poet : a portrait in oil, dated 
1603, painted on a panel and formerly at Ely 
Palace ; another in oil on a panel, attributed, 
but almost certainly incorrectly, to Zucchero ; 
and others of less importance. The portraits 
of Shakespeare's last surviving descendant. Lady 
Barnard, and her second husband, should not be 
passed over without notice. 

The garden at the back of the house in which 
Shakespeare, as a child, must frequently have 
16 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

played, is now embellished with, the flowers 
and fruit-trees which have gained a new interest 
and beauty from their association with passages 
in his plays which will rise to the minds of all 
who gaze upon these beds. In the centre is tlie 
base of the old Market Cross, dating from the 
fourteenth century, which has been removed here 
from its original position in the town. 

The visitor had now better make his way to 
the High Street, at the corner of which and 
Bridge Street he will see the house, now com- 
pletely modernised, which was for thirty-six 
years the residence of Judith Quiney, the 
youngest daughter of the poet. The cellars 
of this house are those which were used by 
Thomas Quiney for the storage of his wine, and 
at the back of them is a dark vaulted chamber 
which may very probably have been the " Little 
Ease " of the town jail, for the house owes its 
name of '* The Cage " to the fact that the 
place of durance for local criminals was once 
situated on this site. Passing down the High 
Street, on the right hand side and near to Ely 
Street, will be seen a good specimen of sixteenth- 
century architecture in the shape of a house with 
elaborately carved bargeboards and other timbers, 
and with projecting upper windows carried upon 
carved wood corbels. This house, which bears 
the date 1596, was built by Thomas Rogers, 
who was an alderman of the town. His 
daughter, Katherine, married John Harvard, 
of Southwark, and from their union sprang the 
Rev. John Harvard, born in Southwark pro- 
B 17 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

bably in 1607, who graduated at Emmanuel 
College, Cambridge, in 1635, went to New 
England in 1637, and dying in 1638, be- 
queathed to a college in that country which it 
was then proposed to erect, his library of over 
300 volumes and £']']()' This College, which 
was named after him, is the well-known Har- 
vard University, situated at Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts, the oldest and one of the richest and 
best equipped seats of learning on the other side 
of the Atlantic. 

The Town Hall is some distance further 
down in Chapel Street, the continuation of 
High Street, and on the left hand side at its 
junction with Sheep Street, It is an uninter- 
esting edifice in an Italian style of architecture, 
erected 1768 on the site of an older building, 
which dated from 1633. It contains some pic- 
tures, the most interesting of which is a portrait 
of Garrick by Gainsborough. A figure of the 
poet, made at the expense of the actor just 
named, for the Jubilee celebrations of 1769, 
and afterwards presented by him to the Cor- 
poration, occupies a niche on the north side of 
the exterior. 

Further down Chapel Street, on the same side 
and at its junction with Chapel Lane, is the site 
of New Place, with the foundations of Shake- 
speare's house. The earliest known building on 
this site was called, in the will of Sir Hugh 
Clopton, to whom it had belonged, " The 
Great House," and was built in the reign of 
Henry VIL In 1597, as has already been 
18 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

mentioned, this property was purchased by the 
poet from William Underhill for the sum of 
jQ6o. After altering it to suit his requirements, 
the poet gave to it the name of New Place. 
The house possessed two gardens, in one of 
which grew the celebrated mulberry tree. Up 
to 1609 it was occupied by the Town- Clerk, 
Thomas Greene, who called himself Shake- 
speare's cousin, for the poet himself does not 
seem to have lived in this house until after the 
marriage of his daughter Susannah to Dr Hall. 
Here he died in 161 6, and here also in all pro- 
bability _ his wife ended her days in 1623. Mrs 
Hall, to whom the property descended, enter- 
tained here, as has already been mentioned. 
Queen Henrietta Maria in 1643, and dying in 
1 649, the property passed to her daughter, Mrs 
Nash, afterwards Lady Barnard. Eventually, 
in 1753, it came by purchase into the possession 
of the Rev. Francis Gastrell, Vicar of Frodsham 
in Cheshire, who has gained for himself a 
notoriety not to be envied by his connection 
with New Place. He appears to have been the 
victim of an unusually bad and selfish temper, 
the results of which are painfully evident to the 
present day. The first offence which it led him 
to commit was the felling of the celebrated mul- 
berry tree, which Shakespeare had planted, and 
under which, in 1742, the Sir Hugh Clopton of 
the day had entertained Garrick, Macklin and 
Dr Delany. This unfortunate tree perished be- 
cause visitors to Stratford were so inconsiderate 
as to wish to see it, a source of great annoyance 

19 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

to its reverend owner. A cup made from its 
wood is in the Museum at the birthplace. His 
next act of vandalism was, unfortunately, much 
more serious. During a portion of the year the 
reverend gentleman was absent from Stratford 
discharging his clerical duties, yet while he was 
away from the house, the authorities of the parish 
stiJl looked for the payment of the usual poor- 
rates. Enraged at this, he actually caused the 
house to be pulled down in 1759, sold its 
materials, and having done all the damage he 
could, and destroyed a spot only second, if 
second in interest to the birthplace, he left the 
town. In 1 86 1 the property was purchased by 
trustees and C9nverted into a public garden, in 
which the well and the foundations of some of 
the rooms of the house can still be traced. In 
another part of the garden is a large alto-relievo 
of Shakespeare, which was formerly in front of 
the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall Mall, London. 

Certain of the houses between New Place and 
the Town Hall are of some interest on account 
of their former occupants. That which is next 
to New Place was, after the poet's death, the 
property of Thomas Nash, the first husband of 
his eldest grand-daughter. After her death it 
reverted to the Nash family, and in 1861 it was 
purchased and added to the New Place property, 
of which it now forms a part, having been con- 
verted into a museum, which contains, amongst 
other objects, an ancient shovel- or shuffle-board, 
which came from the Falcon Tavern opposite, 
a trinket-box, said to have belonged to Anne 
20 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Hathaway, a flagon called Shakespeare's, and 
various things found during the excavations at 
New Place. 

The next house to this belonged to Julius 
Shaw, who, as one of the witnesses of Shake- 
speare's will, may probably have been one of his 
intimate friends. The front of this house has 
been completely modernised. The house next 
but one above this was in 1647 occupied by 
Thomas Hathaway, who belonged to the family 
from which Shakespeare's wife sprang. 



21 



CHAPTER II 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON (continued) 

THE GUILD CHAPEL-THE GUILD HALL AND GRAMMAR 
SCHOOL- THE CHURCH-THE MEMORIAL-PORTRAITS 
OF SHAKESPEARE. 

CXACTLY opposite to New Place is the 
Chapel of the Holy Cross, formerly the 
Chapel of the Guild of the Holy Cross, the 
Blessed Virgin and St John the Baptist. Like 
scores of others throughout the kingdom, this 
Guild was partly religious, partly charitable. 
The exact date of its foundation is not known, 
but it was in existence in the reign of Edward I. 
The Guild was governed by two Aldermen and 
six Councillors, who were bound to attend 
Council meetings under pain of forfeiting four- 
pence each time. Entrance to the Guild was 
by payment of a fee, varying according to 
whether the candidate was married or single, and 
subsequently an annual subscription, which in 
1389 was sixpence, had to be paid. Fines, 
gifts and bequests made up the income from 
which were defrayed the expenses incurred in 
carrying out the various objects of the body. 
Feasts for the promotion of brotherly love were 

23 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

held at various times of the year and particularly 
during Easter week, and the accounts of these 
throw most interesting light upon the manners of 
the day and upon the difficulties with which the 
commissariat had to contend, for many of the 
provisions had to be got in from the neighbouring 
villages, Stratford, itself, presumably not supply- 
ing sufficient for the purpose, and the sheep, goats 
and fowl had to be kept alive for some time at 
the charge of the Guild, until required for the 
kitchen. In 1 410 it is noted that one hundred 
and eight took part in the feast, and in 1416 one 
hundred and seventy-two, exclusive of strangers, 
cooks, &c. The Guild helped to maintain the 
Grammar School and subsidised the services at 
the Parish Church. It kept in order two clocks in 
the town so that all people might be acquainted 
with the right time. It acted as a court of 
arbitration for the settlement of disputes amongst 
neighbours and sometimes ordained the holding 
of a feast for the reconciliation of two who had 
been at strife. Any brother who was robbed, or 
who by other means was reduced to a state of 
poverty, was maintained and provided with " food 
and clothing and what else he needs, so long as 
he bears himself well and rightly towards the 
brethren and sisters of the Guild.'* With all 
this attention to the temporal affairs of its mem- 
bers, their spiritual wants were not neglected. 
The Guild maintained a Chapel and a body of 
Priests, who conducted its services and said mass 
for its living and dead members, whilst "le 
Belman," that is, the town crier, was paid four- 
24 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

pence a year for "praying round about the town 
for the souls of brothers and sisters four times a 
year.'* When a brother died candles were pro- 
vided to be burnt near his unburied body, and 
one-third of the brethren were called upon to 
watch and pray by it during the night after 
his death. Their care for the dead extended 
beyond the ranks of their own brotherhood, for 
they provided four candles, as well as a sheet and 
a hearse-cloth to lie over the coffin until the 
body be buried in the case of any poor man or of 
any stranger who might die in the town. Such 
were some of the many beneficent objects of the 
organisation whose means were absorbed by the 
all-ingulfing greed of the Tudor monarchs. In 
1269 ^^^ affairs of the Guild were in a suffi- 
ciently flourishing condition to permit of its 
members obtaining a licence from Giffard, Bishop 
of Worcester, to erect a chapel and hospital. 
The existing chapel, which occupies the site of 
an earlier building, was erected during the first 
half of the fifteenth century, and its nave was 
rebuilt in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh 
Clopton, Lord Mayor of London in 1492. On 
the outside of the porch, beneath an empty niche, 
are shields bearing the arms of the City of 
London, of the Merchants of the Woolstaple, 
and of Sir Hugh Clopton himself, with a fourth 
shield charged with what are thought to have 
been the original arms of the town. In 1804 a 
series of frescoes were discovered in this chapel, 
but with that vandalism which has cost us so 
many precious monuments of antiquity, they were 

25 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



I 



promptly either destroyed or white-washed over. 
Fortunately there are preserved in the library of 
the Memorial Theatre a series of drawings by 
Thomas Fisher which enable us to form some 
idea of what these ornaments were like. The 
subjects represented were, " The History of the 
Holy Cross," « The Martyrdom of St Thomas of 
Canterbury," "The Combat between St George 
and the Dragon " and " The Doom." The 
Chapel is, architecturally, of comparatively small 
interest, but adjoining it is the Guild Hall, 
a half-timbered building which must not be 
passed over. Such a hall is stated to have 
existed in the fourteenth century, but the present 
building dates from 141 7, when the hall must 
have been either rebuilt or completely restored. 
After the dissolution of the Guild in 1547, the 
government of the town seems to have fallen into 
such a bad state that a petition was made to the 
King for a charter of incorporation which was 
granted by Edward VI. in 1553. By this 
charter some portion of the ancient revenues 
of the Guild and the Hall were granted to the 
new Corporation. The latter then served them 
as a place of meeting until the present Town 
'Hall was built. 

It was also the scene of the performances 
of such travelling companies of players as found 
their way to Stratford. Amongst the companies 
invited to perform by the Bailiff and Aldermen 
were those of the Earls of Leicester, Warwick 
and Worcester, and the first occasion upon which 
any company is recorded as having visited the 
26 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

town was in i 569, the year in which, as we have 
seen, John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was 
High BaiHfF. Other entries in the town records 
tell of later performances, and amongst them, of 
those of the Earl of Leicester's players in 1587, 
when, according to some writers, Shakespeare 
accompanied them to London. 

The windows in the Hall which look upon 
the street are late additions, the room having 
been originally lit by those on the opposite side 
and by a window, now blocked up, at its south 
end. When the modern wainscotting was re- 
moved from this end of the room traces of 
frescoes were exposed, which are still visible, 
that in the centre being the Crucifixion with the 
Blessed Virgin on one side and St John on the 
other. In the outer panels are armorial bearings, 
the Royal Arms on one side, the others as yet 
unidentified. At the lower part of the wall are 
the square holes in which rested the timbers of 
the dais, which probably would also be used as a 
stage. Near the frescoes and on the side nearest 
to the street is to be seen scratched in the plaster 
the record of the provisions used, probably at a 
feast of the Guild, in the time of Henry VII. 

Passing out of the Hall through a doorway, 
above which is the date 16 19, a room is entered 
which is called the armoury or the "greeing 
room.'' It has good panelling of the Jacobean 
period, and the Royal Arms of the date 1660 
are over the fire-place, having been set up at 
that time of the general national rejoicing which 
followed the restoration of the Stuarts. Through 
27 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

a doorway access is gained to a winding stair- 
case, half-way up which is a small chamber, 
called the " Muniment Room," in which a 
number of documents of the sixteenth century, 
now in the Museum, were found some years ago. 
Above the armoury, and at the top of the stair- 
case, is the Council Chamber, with a massive 
oak table of the Jacobean period in the centre. 
On the west wall are painted two large roses, 
one white with a red centre, the other red with 
a white centre, expressive of the joy of the in- 
habitants at the termination of the Wars of the 
Roses by the marriage of Henry VH. to 
Elizabeth of York in 1485. This room is now 
used as the School Library. 

From it what was the Mathematical Room, 
placed above a part of the Guild Hall, is reached. 
It is now continuous with the much larger Latin 
Schoolroom, which occupies the greater part of 
the space above the Hall. At the north end of 
this room stood the desk, now in the birthplace, 
which tradition assigns as the desk of Shake- 
speare. A lobby at the same end of the room, 
above the passage of entry to the Guild Hall, 
abuts upon the wall of the tower of the Guild 
Chapel, inscribed with the names of many 
schoolboys of past generations. From the other 
end of the Latin Schoolroom an outside staircase, 
recently added in place of the ancient way which 
was taken down in 1841, leads to the court- 
yard. On the opposite side of this, and running 
parallel to the schoolhouse, is a half-timbered 
building, which was in early times the peda- 
28 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

gogues' house, but is now used for schoolrooms. 
It is divided into three rooms, and the enormous 
beams of the upper chambers are especially 
worthy of notice. A later building between 
this house and the Guild Chapel, now used as 
a boarding-house for the School, is on the site 
once occupied by the dwelling-place of the 
priests of the Guild of the Holy Cross. On 
the opposite side of this house is the chancel 
of the Chapel, which can be entered by a 
priest's door. The Grammar School was 
founded by the Guild in the beginning of the 
fifteenth century, and was endowed in 1482 by 
Thomas Jolyffe, who occupied the position of 
priest to the Guild. When the Guild was 
suppressed and its funds confiscated, those of the . 
School of course also disappeared, but on the 
petition of the inhabitants certain lands were 
restored by Edward VI. to the Corporation, 
on the condition that a payment was made 
towards the expenses of the school. In con- 
sideration of this act of royal munificence it has 
since been known by the name of King Edward 
VI. 's School. In Church Street, immediately 
adjoining the Guild Hall and School, is a row 
of almshouses, once the dwelling-places of the 
poorer brethren of the Guild of the Holy Cross. 
Passing further along Church Street another 
street, called " Old Town," turns off on the 
left towards the Church. On the left hand 
side of this road is an ancient house known as 
"Hall's Croft," which is said to have been for 
a time the residence of" Dr John Hall, the 
19 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

husband of Susannah Shakespeare. It is a 
three-gabled house, with a porch and bay- 
windows. There is a fine Jacobean oak stair- 
case in the interior, and in the garden is an 
ancient mulberry tree, which is said to have 
been planted by "good Mistress Hall." 

Still further on is the entrance to the church- 
yard of Trinity Church, approached by a fine 
avenue of lime trees, which leads to the north 
porch. The Church, which was originally 
Collegiate, consists of a nave with aisles, tran- 
septs, chancel, north porch, and a central tower, 
surmounted by a spire, which last was erected in 
1764 in place of the decayed timber steeple 
which then occupied that position. The earliest 
portions of the church which remain, though 
much altered, are the walls of the tower, north 
aisle, and transepts, and these date back to the 
early part of the thirteenth century. The north 
porch by which the church is entered has 
a parvise or upper chamber, and buttresses 
terminated by crocketed pinnacles. The nave 
is 103 feet in length and 50 feet in height, and 
is separated from the aisles by arcades of six bays 
of the early decorated period. The existing 
clerestory, erected late in the fifteenth century, 
replaced an earlier one of the same period as the 
arcade. The south aisle was erected 1332, by 
John de Stratford, who founded at its east end 
a chapel dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury. 
The altar slab of this chapel, with its consecra- 
tion crosses, which had by some means escaped 
the universal destruction at the time of the 

30 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Reformation of all altar-stones and other objects 
associated with the Mass, was found some years 
ago, and is now in the chancel. In the south 
wall are the remains of the triple sedilia belong- 
ing to this chapel. The north aisle had also a 
chapel at its east end, called the chapel of Our 
Lady the Virgin, but now better known as the 
Clopton Chapel, on account of the number of 
tombs of that family which are there to be 
found. The following will be noted : — 

( 1 ) A high tomb without effigy or inscrip- 
tion, but with numerous panels which formerly 
possessed brazen shields. This was probably 
intended for Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor 
of London in 1492, who is, however, buried in 
St Margaret's, Lothbury. He had left direc- 
tions that he should be buried at Stratford if he 
died there. 

(2) Against the north wall, a tomb with 
recumbent effigies of WiUiam Clopton and his 
wife Anne, who was daughter of Sir George 
Gryffyth. The husband is in armour, his head 
resting on his helmet, and the wife is dressed in 
a low bodiced robe, and wears a close-fitting 
hood with peaked front on her head. Around 
this tomb is the inscription, "Here lyeth the 
bodies of Willa. Clopton, Esquier, and Anne 
his wyfe, daughter of Sr George Griffeth, 
Knight, wch, Wm., decessed the xviijth of 
April, 1592; the said Anne, decessed the 
xvijth of September, 1 596." Figures of their 
children, several of whom, as shown by the 
swaddling bands in which they are wrapped, 

31 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

died in infancy, also decorate the tomb. It has 
been three times restored, as inscriptions upon 
it relate. First in 1630, by Joyce, Countess 
of Totnes, their eldest daughter ; secondly, in 
17 14 by Sir John Clopton, their great-grandson; 
and lastly, in 1892 by Sir Arthur Hodgson, 
whose name is so prominently identified with the 
recent history of Stratford. 

(3) Against the east wall, the monument of 
George Carew, Earl of Totnes, and Baron 
Clopton and Joyce, his wife, eldest daughter 
of the couple commemorated by the previously 
mentioned tomb. The effigies of the Earl and 
Countess, executed in coloured alabaster lie under 
an arch supported by Corinthian columns. He 
is represented in armour, and the fact that he 
occupied the post of Master of the Ordnance to 
James I. is indicated by the various warlike 
objects represented on the tomb. The Countess 
is dressed in a robe of white fur, with tippet, 
ruff and coronet on her head. The Carew 
shield with fifteen quarterings, supported by 
antelopes and with the motto " Tvtvs svb vmbra 
leonis," is placed above the monument, upon 
which are also the shields of Clopton and 
Gryffyth. The monument bears, besides in- 
scriptions referring to the Earl and Countess, one 
to Sir Thomas Stafford, his natural son, and 
afterwards his secretary, who, however, is not 
buried here. 

(4) On the right of the last, a female figure 
kneeling at a prie-Dieu, commemorates Amy 
Smithy for forty years waiting-gentlewoman to 

32 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

the Countess of Totnes. Other memorials of 
the Clopton family, which need not be more 
particularly alluded to will be found in this part 
of the church. 

The north transept has in its east wall a seg- 
mental arch, beneath which was formerly an 
altar, the piscina belonging to which still survives. 
Another arch in this wall probably led into the 
north choir aisle. In the neighbourhood but 
distinct from the church was the charnel-house, 
which was nearly the height of the chancel and 
was crammed with the bones which were thrown 
up when new graves were excavated. It is 
thought that the horrifying sight which it must 
have presented during his time, was the cause of 
the lines upon Shakespeare's tombstone. It was 
taken down in 1 800. The south transept has a 
similar arch for an altar to that in the north. 

The chancel was erected by Thomas Balshall, 
who was warden of the College of Priests, 
between the years 1465 and 1490, as was 
commemorated by a window in the north aisle 
near the Clopton monuments, bearing the inscrip- 
tion, <' Thomas Balshall, Doctor of Divinity, re- 
edifyed this (juier, and dyed Anno 1491," a few 
i fragments of which still remain. The chancel 
i is separated from the nave by a late fifteenth- 
I century oak screen. It is lighted on each side 
. by five windows and by a seven light window at 
I the east end. The three most westerly windows 
: on the north side have been erected by American 
! subscriptions and represent the Seven Ages of 
(Mankind. At the east end of the chancel are 

c 33 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

on its south side triple sedilia with a piscina 
whilst on its north side are the tombs of Thomas 
Balshall, the builder of the choir, an altar tomb, 
much defaced, and of John Combe, the friend 
of Shakespeare. 

The greatest interest, however, of course 
attaches to the memorials of the poet and his 
descendants which are the chief glory of the 
chancel. The monument of Shakespeare is on 
the north wall and consists of a bust of the poet 
under an arch surmounted by his arms and motto. 
This monument must have been erected prior to 
1623, since it is alluded to in the following lines 
published in the first folio edition of the plays 
and written by Leonard Digges : 

" Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellowes give 
The world thy workes : thy workes, by which, out-live 
Thy tombe, thy name must when that stone is rent, 
And time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment, 
Here we alive shall view thee still." 

It is believed that Dr Hall and his wife pro- 
vided this monument and there is no doubt that 
they superintended its erection. It was con- 
structed by Gerard Johnson, or Janssen, a Dutch 
stonemason, whose place of business was near the 
Globe Theatre, and who may, therefore, well 
have been familiar with the poet's personal 
appearance. It is thought that he may have 
been assisted by a death-ma^k taken by Dr John 
Hall, and according to some authorities, there is 
high probability that the Darmstadt mask may 
be this identical object. If so, it would of 
course be of the highest value, but unfortunately 

34 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

it is exceedingly difficult to prove the authenticity 
of this mask about which so much controversy 
has raged. Mr Wall, sometime keeper of the 
Memorial Library, has recently shown that, as 
the record of foreigners kept during the reigns 
of Elizabeth and James I. proves, Gerard 
Johnson was not in this country during the 
time that the monument must have been under 
construction. It is probable, therefore, that the 
figure may have been made in Amsterdam, of 
which place Johnson was a native, which might 
account for the death-mask having found its 
way to the Continent. However, the question 
is one which is by no means settled either way. 

When erected, the bust was coloured to re- 
semble life, the eyes a light hazel and the beard 
and hair auburn. The bust was repaired and 
beautified in 1 748 by Mr John Ward out of the 
proceeds of a performance of Othello. In 1793, 
Malone succeeded in persuading the then vicar 
to have the bust painted white, an act of vandal- 
ism somewhat avenged by the well-known lines 
written in the visitors' book in 1810 : 

" Stranger to whom this Monument is shewn, 
Invoke the Poet's curse upon Malone 
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays 
And smears his tombstone as he marr'd his plays." 

This coat of white paint was scraped off in 1861 
and the monument recoloured as far as possible 
in its original tints, nor is there any reason to 
think that they are otherwise than a faithful 
representation of those which were laid on by 
the brush of Gerard Johnson. The figure stands 

35 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

in the recess with hands resting upon a cushion 
and beneath it is the following inscription : 

" Judicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, Populvs maeret, Olympvs habet. 
Stay passenger, why goest thov by so fast ? 
Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs death hath plast 
Within this monvment : Shakspeare, with whome : 
Qvicke natvre dide; whose name doth deck ys. tombe 
Far more then cost ; sith all yt. he hath writt. 
Leaves living art, bvt page to serve his witt. 

Obiit. Ano.Doi. i6i6. Aetatis 53. Die 23 Ap." 

Below the monument stretch the tombs of the 
family, just within the communion rails, a posi- 
tion which they occupied by right of possession 
of the greater tithes. Proceeding from the 
monument, they are arranged in the following 
order : — 

( 1 ) A slab with a small brass plate bearing 
the inscription — 

" Heere lyeth interred the body of Anne, wife of William 
Shakespeare, who depted this life the 6 day of Aug: 
1623. being of the age of 67 yeares. 

Ubera, tu mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti, 

Vae mihi pro tanto munere Saxa dabo ! 
Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem, bonus Angel, ore, 

Exeat Christi Corpus imago tua 
Sed nil vota valent, venias cito Christe, resurget, 

Clausa licet tumulo mater, et astra petet." 

(2) A slab covering the remains of the poet, 
and inscribed with the well-known lines, inspired 
as has been said, in all probability, by the horrible 
desecration of graves, which filled the charnel- 
house hard by, and which he had depicted in 
the grave-digging scene in "Hamlet" — 

36 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

" Good frend for lesus sake forbeare 
To digg the dvst enclosed heare : 
Bleste be ye. man yt. spares thes stones, 
And cvrst be he yt. moves my bones." 

(3) The tomb of Thomas Nash, husband to 
Elizabeth, daughter of Susannah Hall and grand- 
daughter of the poet, with the inscription — 

" Heere resteth ye. body of Thomas Nashe, Esq. he. mar. 
Elizabeth, the davg: and heire of John Halle, gent. 
He died Aprill 4. A. 1647. ^S^^ S3- 

Fata manent omnes, hunc non virtute carentem 
Vt neq divitiis, abstulit atra dies ; — 
Abstulit : at referet Ivx vltima ; siste viator, 
Si peritura paras, per male parta peris." 

(4) Dr Hall, the poet's son-in-law — 

" Heere lyeth the body of John Hall, Gent : he marr : 
& co-heire 
Svsanna, ye davghter of Will. Shakespeare, Gent, 
hee deceased Nover 25 Ao. 1635, ^^ged 60. 

Hallius hie situs est medica celeberimus arte, 

Expectans regni gaudia laeta Dei. 
Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis, 

In terris omnes, sed rapit aequa dies ; 
Ne tumulo, qui desit adest fidissima conjux, 

Et vitae Comitem nunc quoq; mortis habet." 

( 5 ) Susannah, the poet's eldest daughter. The 
verses inscribed on this slab and given below are 
not in the original lettering. Those originally 
placed upon the stone were erased most unwar- 
rantably, about the year 1707, in order to make 
room for the epitaph of one Richard Watts, who 
was wholly unconnected with the Shakespeare 
family. Fortunately the original inscription had 

37 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

been recorded by Dugdale, the Warwickshire 
antiquary, and, in 1836, Watts' inscription was 
erased and that of Mrs Hall restored. The 
inscription is as follows: — 

" Heere lyeth ye. body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall, 
Gent : ye. davghter of William Shakespeare, Gent. 
Shee deceased ye. nth of Jvly, Ao. 1649, ^S^^ ^^• 

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, 
Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall, 
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this 
Wholy of him with whom she's now in blisse. 
Then, Passenger, ha'st ne're a teare 

To weepe with her that wept with all ? 
That wept, yet set herselfe to chere 

Them up with comforts cordiall. 
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread, 
When thou hast ne're a tear to shed." 

Between this tombstone and the south wall 
are two other slabs, unconnected with the 
Shakespeare family, to Francis Watts, ob. 
1691, and Anne Watts, ob. 1704. 

In the church are also preserved for the in- 
spection of visitors the old parish register, open 
at the records of the baptism and burial of the 
poet, an old chained Bible, and the ancient font 
in which presumably the future poet was bap- 
tised. This had been removed from the church, 
and for some time stood in a garden in the town. 
It has now been restored to the church, though 
it is no longer used. 

Leaving the church and passing down Southern 
Lane, which turns out of Old Town on the right 
hand, the Shakespeare Memorial is reached. 
This building is situated near the public gardens, 

38 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

called the Bancroft Gardens, not, as many 
people suppose, so named in compliment to the 
well-known actor and actress, the name being 
a corruption of Bank-Croft, a title which its 
proximity to the Avon fully explains. In the 
gardens of the memorial is also placed the statue 
of Shakespeare, presented by its maker. Lord 
Ronald Gower. The base of the statue is 
adorned by four fine figures by the same artist, 
representing Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, FalstafF, 
and Prince Hal. The memorial is the partial 
realisation of a project long entertained. As far 
back as the Jubilee of the eighteenth century, 
Garrick made the suggestion that a school of 
acting should be established at Stratford as a 
memorial to Shakespeare. Again in this cen- 
tury's Jubilee it was pointed out that such a 
memorial, or indeed any national memorial, was 
still wanting. At this time there was a small 
theatre in Stratford, which stood in the New 
Place Gardens, obviously a very unsatisfactory 
position. It had been erected in 1827, and 
here it may be mentioned that the performances 
of various kinds at the Jubilee of 1769 took 
place in a wooden amphitheatre erected on the 
Bank-Croft. The New Place Theatre was 
pulled down in 1872, in order to clear the 
garden, and two years later Mr Charles E. 
Flower, whose generous gifts will cause his name 
to be always associated with Stratford, offered a 
site and a handsome donation to start the project 
of a National Memorial. A committee was 
formed, which raised a suflBcient sum to build 

39 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

the present edifice, though further funds are 
sorely needed to provide an adequate endow- 
ment. The building was completed in 1883, 
though parts of it had been in use for some time 
before, the theatre having been inaugurated by a 
performance of " Much Ado about Nothing," 
in which Lady Martin was Beatrice and Barry 
Sullivan, Benedick, on the 23rd of April 1879. 

On the ground floor is the Library which 
contains at present over ten thousand volumes 
relating to the poet and. his works, a most valu- 
able collection to the student, and one that in 
time to come must attract to Stratford all those 
who are anxious to critically investigate the 
literature of Shakespearian criticism and exegesis. 

A stone staircase leads to the Picture Gallery 
and also to the dress-circle of the theatre. The 
Picture Gallery contains some interesting por- 
traits of actors and actresses including Bell's fine 
picture of Miss Rehan as Katharina in " The 
Taming of the Shrew," Crowley's Phelps as 
Hamlet, Sir T. Lawrence' s John Kemble, Van 
Somer's Earl of Southampton. Portraits of 
David Garrick by Pine, Reynolds, Zoffany, 
&c.; also subject pictures by Romney, Reynolds, 
Opie, Martin, Northcote, Smirke, and others. 
It also possesses a copy of the Davenant bust of 
the poet and an exceedingly interesting portrait 
which claims, though the claim is hotly disputed 
by some excellent authorities, to be the original 
from which the Droeshout portrait was engraved. 
As this is 'a point of great interest to Shake- 
spearians, it may be permissible to dwell for a 

40 



STR ATFORD-ON- AVON 

short space upon the portraits of the poet. The 
most authentic likeness which we possess is 
almost certainly that which is known as the 
Droeshout portrait from the name of the artist 
who engraved it for the first folio edition of the 
plays. Ben Jonson at any rate must have been 
fairly satisfied with this picture of his dead 
*' beloved " for he was the author of the well- 
known lines printed with the picture — 

" This Figure, that thou here seest put, 
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; 
Wherein the Graver had a strife 
With Nature to out-doo the life : 
O, could he but have drawne his wit 
As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
His face, the Print would then surpasse 
All, that was ever writ in brasse. 
But since he cannot, Reader, looke 
Not on his Picture, but his Booke." 

The question of importance then is as to what 
has become of the original from which Droe- 
shout made his engraving. For years there was 
no trace of this picture, but recently Mrs Flower 
has presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery 
a painting which claims to be this identical por- 
trait. It is painted on an elm-panel and dated 
1609, has been examined by many antiquaries 
and artists, some of whom are strong supporters 
of its authenticity, whilst others consider that 
under the painting can be seen another and 
earlier portrait of some person in a dress later 
than that of Shakespeare's period, which, if 
true, would of course dispose of the question at 
once. On the other hand it is pointed out by 

41 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Mr Salt Brassington that in some of the early 
impressions of the Droeshout engraving, a mark 
is seen on the left of the head in the hatching of 
the background, which represents the outline of 
another collar. This mark corresponds with 
the outline of the collar beneath the surface of 
the background of the painting when seen in a 
strong light, which looks as if this must have 
been the picture from which the engraver 
worked. Mr Sidney Lee is inclined to accept the 
authenticity of this portrait and has prefixed a 
photogravure of it to his life of the poet. How- 
ever at present the question must be considered 
to be one of the many associated with Shake- 
speare, a definite and satisfactory solution of 
which will perhaps never be reached. The bust 
in Trinity Church must, for reasons already 
given, be allowed also to possess a high degree 
of authenticity. It is worthy of notice that the 
colour of the eyes in the so-called Droeshout 
original is bluish-grey whilst in the bust it is 
light hazel. But the colour in the bust was 
given by Collins who painted it after it had been 
twice painted and once white-washed, so that no 
stress can be laid on this point. The Chandos 
portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, 
where it is catalogued as having been the pro- 
perty of John Taylor, an actor and a con- 
temporary of Shakespeare. The pedigree of 
this picture is quite clear and unbroken, but it 
has been objected that it is too highly idealised. 
Engravings and copies of this picture hang in 
various galleries. The history of the Stratford 
42 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

portrait, already mentioned as hanging in one of 
the upper rooms of the birthplace, is unfortun- 
ately anything but clear and its claims to authen- 
ticity are of the smallest. The Davenant bust 
has a curious history which is thus given by Mr 
and Mrs Ward in their pleasant book on 
" Shakespeare's Town and Times." " Sir 
William Davenant, godson of the poet, and one 
of his favourites, was eight years old when the 
poet died. He was an educated gentleman, a 
courtier, soldier, musician, actor and poet — in 
fact he held the position of Poet Laureate. It 
is beheved, also, that he was a painter of some 
ability. In 1662, while many of Shakespeare's 
contemporaries were still alive. Sir William 
Davenant built the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields. Long after his death the building 
was very greatly changed ; all except the front 
wall was rebuilt, and the place became a ware- 
house. In the middle of the present century it 
was occupied by Messrs Spode & Wilkinson, 
the great pottery and china merchants. A few 
years ago the whole was pulled down to be 
replaced by a building for the Royal College of 
Surgeons, and during the demolition there was 
found over one of the front entrances, a niche, 
bricked up in front, and containing a terra-cotta 
bust of Ben Jonson. Unfortunately, as no such 
niche was suspected, the bust was broken by the 
workmen. Mr Clint, who was superintending, 
the operations, suspected there might be a similar 
recess over the other doorway, had it carefully 
unbricked, and found therein the bust of Shake- 

43 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

speare, which has since been called the Daven- 
ant." By Mr Clint the bust was given to Sir 
Richard Owen, his son-in-law, who gave it to 
the Garrick Club, where it now is ; a copy 
which stood in Sir Richard's garden was given 
by his son to the Memorial. About the 
authenticity of this bust there are many disputes, 
some alleging that it was made for Spode, but it 
is certainly a curious thing that if this was the 
case it should have been bricked up in such a 
singular manner. It may be of the time of 
Charles II., but cannot be earlier on account of 
the costume and may be later. The bust in the 
memorial has the date 1854 scratched upon its 
back, and the interior is pardy filled with the 
roots of the ivy which covered it as it stood 
in Sir Richard's garden. In any case the his- 
tory of this portrait entitles it to the attention of 
the visitor. 

The theatre in *the Memorial Buildings is 
capable of seating about 800 persons, and has a 
drop scene representing Queen Elizabeth going 
in state past the Globe Theatre. Every year, 
during the fortnight in which the poet's birth- 
day falls, there are performances in the theatre, 
and at other times, but irregularly, it is visited 
by travelling companies. The tower of the 
Memorial, 120 feet in height, should be ascended 
for the sake of the views, and those who do not 
care for this climb should not neglect to look 
out of the side tower window on the Picture 
Gallery level, whence one of the most delightful 
views of the river and church is to be obtained. 

44 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

After leaving the Memorial, the bridge over the 
Avon should be visited. As its name signifies, 
this must from early times have been an im- 
portant passage over the river Avon, though not 
connected with either the Fosse way, which passes 
south of it, or the Rykenield Street to its west 
which crossed the river at Bidford. In Saxon 
times in any case it must have been often used, 
and doubtless derived the first part of its name 
from some road of that if not of an earlier period. 
A bridge of timber preceded the present struc- 
ture of which Dugdale says, " Here is a fair Bridg 
of Stone over Avon containing xiii arches, with 
a long Causey at the west end of it, walled on 
both sides : which Bridg and Causey were so 
built in Henry VII. time by the before speci- 
fied Hugh Clopton. Whereas before there was 
only a timber Bridg and no Causey, so that the 
passage became very perillous upon the overflow- 
ing of that River." The second arch on the 
eastern side was destroyed by the Parliamentarian 
army in 1645, and rebuilt in 1652. 

Close by this bridge is another of brick which 
carries a tram-line, now seldom if ever used, to 
Shipston-on-Stour, a very pretty walk. Before 
leaving the subject of Stratford, mention must 
be made of the fountain in Rother Street, a 
monument of the generosity of Mr Childs the 
donor, and of the artistic skill of Mr J. A. 
Cossins, the designer. 

The memory of Shakespeare so overshadows 
Stratford as to make it easy to forget that other 
names of lesser magnitude are in some measure 

45 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

associated with it. The Washington Irving 
room at the Red Horse Hotel is full of remin- 
iscences of that delightful writer, and contains 
various objects to which he alludes in his Sketch 
Book. And, to pass to a much lesser luminary, 
Nicholas , Brady, the collaborator with Nahum 
Tate, in the metrical version of the Psalms, was 
for three years vicar of Holy Trinity Church. 



46 



CHAPTER III 

VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD AS- 
SOCIATED WITH SHAKESPEARE 

Shottery-wilnecote-aston cantlow-snitter- 
field - luddington - billesley - charlecote- 
clopton-grafton-the eight villages 

SHOTTERY, about one mile from Stratford- 
on-Avon, is the traditional home of Anne 
Hathaway and the scene of Shakespeare's court- 
ship. It is not, however, certain that she lived 
in the house to which her name is attached, nor 
has it even been proved to a demonstration, that 
she was a resident in Shottery at all. What is 
certain is, that in the time of Shakespeare, a 
Richard Hathaway, one of three families of that 
surname resident in the village, did live in this 
house, and on his death bequeathed certain sums 
to his children, enumerating by name three 
daughters, of whom the eldest was named Agnes, 
a name interchangeable at that period with that of 
Anne. In the same will, one Thomas Whit- 
tington of Stratford, his shepherd, is named as a 
creditor to his estate. Now in this Whittington's 
will, at a later date, is a bequest to the poor 

47 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

of Stratford of a sum of eleven shillings, " that is 
in the hand of Anne Shaxpere, wyfe unto Mr 
Wyllyani Shaxpere, and is due debt unto me." 
Again, the witnesses to Shakespeare's marriage 
bond appear in connection with Richard Hatha- 
way's will, one as a supervisor, the other as 
a witness, and the instrument is further marked 
with a seal inscribed R.H., which is thought to 
have been that of Anne's father. This cumu- 
lative evidence if insufficient to prove to a de- 
monstration, at least establishes the highest degree 
of probability that the house in question was 
really occupied by Anne Hathaway, the future 
wife of William Shakespeare. It is a good deal 
more than a cottage, being really only a part of 
what was in Richard Hathaway' s day, a con- 
siderable farm-house, which in the latter part 
of the eighteenth century was divided up into 
tenements. It was purchased in 1892 by the 
trustees of the birthplace. In one of the up- 
stairs rooms, called, though without any secure 
foundation, Anne Hathaway's bedroom, is an 
old carved bedstead of the Elizabethan period. 
The present caretaker of this house, Mrs Baker, 
is the last survivor of the family of Hathaway. 
The old Manor House of Shottery contains a 
room in the roof where its fine timbers are 
visible. It is thought that this may have been 
used for Catholic services when they were pro- 
scribed by the law, and it is even suggested that 
Shakespeare's marriage may have taken place 
there (see p. 52). 

WiLNECOTE, about three miles from Stratford, 
48 



VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

is supposed by many to have been the scene of 
Christopher Sly's debauch, 

" Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of 
Burton-heath, by birth a pedlar, by educa- 
tion a card-maker, by transmutation a bear- 
herd, and now by present profession a tinker ? 
Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of 
Wincot, if she know me not : if she say 
I am not fourteen pence on the score for 
sheer ale, score me up for the ly ingest knave 
in Christendom.'' 

Others have considered it to be a place of that 
name in the parish of Quinton, four miles from 
Stratford, where during Shakespeare's time, as 
proved by the parish registers, there actually 
was a family of Hacket. Others, again, have 
identified it with Wilnecote, a village near Tam- 
worth, in Staffordshire. Wilnecote is, at any 
rate, the village in which is situated what is 
known as the house of Mary Arden, Shake- 
speare's mother, though it is very doubtful 
whether it is the identical domicile or one near 
it. This is a half-timbered building, two storeys 
in height, with dormer windows. The only 
trace of antiquity in its interior are the beams, 
but the farm-buildings and the ancient dove-cot 
make a picturesque group. 

AsTON Cantlow, or more properly East- 
town, from its situation with regard to Alcester, 
Cantilupe, from the name of the lords of the 
manor from 1205 to 1272, is a somewhat in- 
accessible village between Alcester and Bearley. 

o 49 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

It is probable that the marriage of John Shake- 
speare and Mary Arden took place in the church 
of this village, which apart from this fact is 
quite worth a visit from its intrinsic beauty and 
interest. The family of Cantilupe, just men- 
tioned, possessed a castle here, the remains of 
the earthworks of which are to be seen at the 
north side of the church and close beside the 
river Alne, which when swollen by rain still 
fills the ancient moat with water. A picturesque 
half-timbered house in the village, divided into 
cottages now, was the hall of the Guild of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary. A chantry chapel (four- 
teenth century) of this Guild stands on the north 
side of the chancel of the parish church. Over 
the north door of the church there is a curious 
rude carving, representing the Virgin and Child in 
bed, with St Joseph standing at the foot of the 
couch. At the west end of the north aisle is a 
singular newel staircase, which must have been 
intended to communicate with some upper 
chamber or parvise, which can never have been 
completed, for the stairs lead nowhere. The 
chancel possesses triple sedilia, a piscina and 
credence table being connected to them by a 
common moulding terminated by two carved 
heads. There are two good old open pews in 
the north aisle, the chantry above-mentioned, 
terminated by poppy-heads. 

Snitterfield, four miles from Stratford, is 
the village in which Shakespeare's grandfather 
held property, the exact position of which has 
not been identified. Here also his uncle Henry 

50 



VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

lived in a cottage near the church, which has 
disappeared. Through his wife John Shake- 
speare had reversionary rights to property in this 
parish, which, as we have seen, he was obliged 
to sell during the time of his troubles. The 
church, of which the greater part is of the 
decorated period, the tower, and clerestory being 
perpendicular, contains some good old carved 
woodwork, an octagonal fourteenth century font, 
and a seventeenth century pulpit. There is a slab 
in the vestry to the memory of Richard Jago, a 
local poet, author of " Edgehill ; or The Rural 
Prospect Delineated and Moralised — A poem 
in Four Books, printed for J. Dodsley in Pall 
Mall, 1767," who was vicar for twenty years, 
and whose daughters planted the silver birch 
trees on the lawn of the picturesque vicarage. 
The churchyard contains a fine double yew tree 
and some unusually large limes. In the park 
near at hand is an avenue of fine elm trees, 
which originally led to the hall, a building 
demolished in 1820. 

LuDDiNGTON, three miles from Stratford and 
one from Shottery, is not a place of any intrinsic 
interest, but deserves mention because it is one 
of the places where, according to tradition, the 
marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne 
Hathaway took place. It is suggested by some 
that a form of contract, if not actually legal, 
at least binding in foro consc'ientiae, was entered 
into between these two at a date considerably 
prior to their actual marriage in church. It has 
been thought that this may have consisted in the 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

ceremony of handfasting or solemn betrothal, 
which, as it formed a legal bar to any other 
marriage, was looked upon as a valid ceremony, 
though it was generally supplemented by the 
usual office in church. Others, who hold the 
theory that Shakespeare was an adherent of the 
proscribed Catholic religion, a very disputable 
conclusion, founded amongst other evidence, 
which cannot here be considered, upon the 
appearance of his father's name in the lists of 
recusants, and upon Davies' assertion ("idle 
gossip," says Mr Lee) that the poet "died a 
Papist," have considered that he was privately 
married by the then forbidden rites of that 
church. It has even been suggested that this 
ceremony may have taken place in the roof-room 
at Shottery Manor, where it is possible that 
Catholic worship was carried on privately. But 
it must be borne in mind that all such ideas are 
pure surmises and rest upon no known basis of 
fact. What we do know is that some ceremony 
of marriage must have been performed about the 
period of the issue of the marriage bond, for his 
eldest child was baptised as one born in wedlock. 
Where this ceremony took place is not known, 
and the tradition that it was at Luddington rests 
entirely upon oral statements. If it was in this 
village, the church in which it took place is no 
more, a new one having replaced it in 1872. 
Unfortunately the register of the old church has 
disappeared in comparatively recent times, but 
Fullom states that in 1862 he found many 
people in Stratford who declared that they had 

52 



VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

seen the record of Shakespeare's marriage in 
this register. 

Temple Grafton is another spot which claims 
this distinction. It is about four miles from 
Stratford, and is one of the places alluded to 
with the epithet '* Hungry," in the rhyme pro- 
fessing to give the list of villages in which 
Shakespeare had drunken, to which further 
attention will shortly be paid. The original 
church was built in the fourteenth century, and 
pulled down in 1875. 

The evidence in favour of this place is based 
upon the fact that in the Episcopal registers at 
Worcester there is a record of the issue of a 
license for a marriage between " Willielmum 
Shaxpere and Annam Whateley de Temple 
Grafton," dated 27th of November 1582, that 
is one day before the signing of the marriage 
bond by Shakespeare's sureties. It is thought 
that the name Whateley may easily be a clerical 
error for that of Hathaway, and that the coin- 
cidence of the other name and of the date are 
too great to allow it to be supposed that the 
licenses related to any other persons than the poet 
and his bride. Mr Lee, however, thinks this 
William " was doubtless another of the William 
Shakespeares who abounded in the diocese of 
Worcester." 

BiLLESLEY is the third place where the marriage 
is said to have taken place. It is situated nearly 
mid-way between Stratford and Alcester. As 
in the case of the other two competing spots, the 
original church has disappeared, for the present 

53 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

edifice is apparently of early eighteenth century 
work, so that if the question of the scene of 
Shakespeare's wedding is ever cleared up, and the 
palm is awarded to anyone of these three villages, 
the pilgrim will be unable to visit the actual 
edifice in which the ceremony took place, and 
thus some unoffending sexton will have been de- 
frauded of a substantial addition to his income. 

The evidence in favour of Billesley rests upon 
nothing but tradition, but it is at least certain and 
interesting that here, in 1639, Elizabeth, the 
daughter of Dr and Mrs Hall, was married to 
Mr, afterwards Sir John, Barnard, her second 
husband. The Manor-house, which is only the 
south wing of the original Elizabethan building, 
contains a room, panelled with oak said to have 
been brought from New Place, which is called 
Shakespeare's room, and is traditionally believed 
to have been occupied by the poet on his visits to 
the house. 

Charlecote, about four miles from Stratford, 
is the seat of the Lucy family, and the scene of 
the probably apocryphal deer-stealing exploits 
of the poet. That there was some friction be- 
tween him and the Sir Thomas Lucy of that 
day seems tolerably certain, but whether it arose 
from difference of religion, as some have sug- 
gested, or from some other cause, it is impossible 
to say. Amongst other points of difficulty in 
connection with the deer-stealing story, it seems 
highly probable that at the time it is supposed to 
have occurred there were no deer in the park at 
Charlecote. There were, however, undoubtedly 

54 




'»- ^' j 






'■■' ," ■■> I •!/ /-. It 




VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

deer in the neighbouring park of Fulbroke, which 
was also the property of the Lucys, and the 
poaching affray, if it ever occurred at all, may 
have taken place there. In any case most com- 
mentators are agreed that Shakespeare intended to 
satirise Sir Thomas Lucy under the guise of Mr 
Justice Shallow, in the "Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor," where "the dozen white luces in their 
coat" seems certainly to be a reference to the 
pike in the Lucy coat-of-arms, that fish being 
known in heraldry as a Lucie. This particular 
passage, it may be mentioned, is not to be found 
in the Quarto which appeared in 1602, that is 
two years after this Sir Thomas' death, but was 
first printed in the Folio. The village of Charle- 
cote was granted to Walter "of that ilk," by 
Henry de Montfort, temp. Richard I. His 
son Wilham, in 12 16, assumed the name of 
Lucy, which has ever since belonged to the 
family. The present house dates from 1558, 
when it was erected by Sir Thomas Lucy, but 
has been much altered at later dates. It was 
visited in 1572 by Queen Elizabeth, and in the 
park the Scottish army encamped in 1645, ^^ 
the 9th of September, on its way northward 
from Hereford. The Gatehouse is a most 
beautiful and genuine specimen of Elizabethan 
architecture, with octagonal turrets and an oriel 
window over the archway. It, as well as the 
house, which it much surpasses in interest, is 
built of brick. The house is of the character- 
istic E shape of the period, though the porch, 
which forms the central and shorter projection, 

55 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

and is said to have been erected to please Her 
Majesty on her visit, is not central. The Great 
Hall in the interior is lit by a bay window 
containing the Lucy arms, and round the wain- 
scotting of the room are seventy-one shields con- 
taining the arms of the families with whom the 
Lucys have become connected by marriage since 
the time of Edmund Ironsides. The Dining- 
room has a fine panelled plaster ceiling of the 
date of the house. 

The church, which was built in 1853 on the 
site of the older building, contains a plain tub 
font of early Norman, perhaps pre-Conquest 
date. Separated from the north side of the 
chancel by a carved oak screen is the Lucy 
chapel, which contains the following tombs : — 
(i) Sir Thomas Lucy and his wife Joyce. 
This was Shakespeare's antagonist, who died in 
1602, his wife having predeceased him in 1595. 
On the front of the tomb are their only son and 
daughter, Thomas and Anne. ( 2 ) The second 
Sir Thomas, son of the above, who died 1605. 
He was twice married, and a kneehng figure of 
his second wife Constance is at the side of the 
tomb, which is ornamented with effigies of his 
six sons and eight daughters. ( 3 ) Sir Thomas, 
the third of this group, son of the last, with his 
wife Alice. He was killed by a fall from his 
horse, 1640. 

Clopton House, situated about one mile and 
a half from Stratford, was formerly the seat of 
the Clopton family, whose name is so much 
associated with Stratford, and to whom the pro- 

56 



VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

perty was granted in the thirteenth century. It 
is now in the possession of Sir Arthur Hodgson, 
whose interest in all the later developments of 
Stratford has been keen and continuous. The 
present house, or rather a part of it, was built in 
the reign of Henry VIL, but it was much altered 
in 1665 and again in 1830, so that a porch at 
the back is the only portion now remaining which 
is recognisably attributable to the earliest period 
of the house. There is an oak staircase of the 
Jacobean period, and in a bay window in the 
dining-room are the shields of several of the 
Clopton family. The attic story was used as a 
place of worship by Catholics under the penal 
laws, and has texts in black letter on the walls. 
It is said to have been a meeting-place of the 
conspirators concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, 
at which time the house had been rented by 
Ambrose Rookwood, who is said to have enter- 
tained here Wright, Winter, Keyes, Catesby, 
and others. After the discovery of the plot, a 
bag was seized by the Bailiff of Stratford, con- 
taining " copes, vestments, crosses, crucifixes, 
chalices, and other massing reliques" (it must 
have been a capacious bag), a full inventory of 
which, made at the time, is in the collection at 
the birthplace. At the back of the house is a 
spring, now arched over, in which Margaret 
Clopton, whose father, William Clopton, died 
in 1592, is said to have drowned herself as a 
result of disappointment in love, an occurrence 
which may perhaps have suggested the death of 
Ophelia to her author. There seems some pro- 

57 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

bability, too, that Clopton House is the prototype 
of that in the second part of the induction to the 
*' Taming of the Shrew." 

The Eight Villages. — A rhyme assigned, 
but with no foundation, to Shakespeare, describes 
him as having drunk at 

" Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, 
Haunted Hillborough, Hungry Grafton, 
Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, 
Beggarly Broom and Drunken Bidford." 

Some cursory notice of these villages, associated, 
however unjustly, with the name of Shakespeare, 
must not be omitted here. 

Pebworth is in Gloucestershire, about nine 
miles from Stratford. It contains nothing of 
special interest except a mural painting in the 
church of the date of 1629 to the Martin family. 

Marston, also in Gloucestershire, about seven 
miles from Stratford, called " Sicca," on account 
of the state of its fields in the summer, and 
" Dancing," from the former fame of its Morris 
dancers, contains a house known as the " Old 
King Charles the Second," in which that 
monarch hid, under the disguise of a serving- 
man and the name of Will Jackson, after the 
Battle of Worcester. The story of the cook's 
anger with the king because he could not wind 
up the jack and his reply, " I am a poor tenant's 
son of Colonel Lane, in Staffordshire ; we seldom 
have roast meat, but when we have, we don't 
make use of a jack," is to be found in the 
Boscobel Tracts, and the roasting-jack of the 
tale is still preserved in the house. 

58 



VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

HiLLBORouGH is a picturesquc manor-house 
three or four miles from Stratford, of the Tudor 
period, but has lost one of its wings. The origin 
of the prefix ** haunted " is not known. 

Grafton has been already dealt with (see 

p. 53). 

ExHALL, possibly called " dodging '' because 
of its remote situation, is about six miles from 
Stratford. It contains a church which has been 
restored so as to be practically a new edifice in 
1863. It contains brasses to John Walsingham 
(ob. 1566) and his wife. 

WixFORD is situated on the Ryknield Street, 
eight or nine miles from Stratford, and two from 
Alcester, and near the river Arrow. The 
church has Norman doors north and south, two 
thirteenth-century lancet windows, an "pearly four- 
teenth-century east window, and a fifteenth- 
century chantry chapel, which contains a fine 
tomb for the founder, Thomas de Cruwe (ob. 
1400) and his wife. The words forming the 
inscription on the brass are separated from one 
another by representations of the human foot, 
which was the badge of that family, and this is 
repeated in other parts of the same monument. 
The figures on this remarkable brass are under 
crocketed pedimental canopies, the husband is 
in armour and the wife in a coif with veil to her 
shoulders, a close-fitting gown with girdle, and 
long cloak open in front. Above the figures are 
four coats-of-arms. There is a good piscina in 
this chapel, and there are other brasses in the 
church itself. 

59 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Broom is only a collection of cottages about a 
mile south of Wixford, and probably merited the 
contemptuous epithet which it received. 

BiDFORD, about eight miles from Stratford, is 
probably a place of great antiquity, as it is situ- 
ated at the point where that ancient British 
trackway, the Ryknield Street crosses the river 
Avon. It was a demesne of the Crown in the 
time of Edward the Confessor, and was given by 
King John to Llewellyn, Prince of North Wales, 
as a dowry with his daughter Joan. In the reign 
of Edward I. it was purchased by Robert 
Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Lord 
Treasurer and Lord Chancellor of England, 
1292. He was the builder of Acton Burnell 
Castle in Shropshire, at which the first Parlia- 
ment was held. In the reign of Henry VII. it 
was the property of Lord Lovel, but on his 
attainder it escheated to the Crown, and was 
subsequently granted to Gerard Danet by Henry 

vin. 

The river is here crossed by a most picturesque 
old bridge, built by the monks of Alcester in 
1482, to supersede the ford, and is a favourite 
spot for boating excursions. A row up the river 
to Welford (see p. 80), or down to Cleeve 
Mill, will well reward the visitor ; and should 
the latter be his choice, the boat can be left at 
the mill, whilst Abbot's Salford (see p. 81), 
which can be reached by a pleasant field path, is 
visited. 

Close by the churchyard in Bidford will be 
seen a fine old house of the Elizabethan period, 
60 



VILLAGES NEAR STRATFORD 

built of stone, with mullioned windows and 
excellent brick chimney-stacks. This was the 
Falcon Inn, from which the sign and chair in 
the birthplace came, and is the traditional scene 
of Shakespeare's perhaps quite apocryphal drink- 
ing-bouts. About three-quarters of a mile from 
Bidford, on the Stratford road, there was a crab- 
tree under which the poet was said to have slept 
off the effects of his liquor. It is now repre- 
sented by a younger tree of the same species in 
another part of the same field. The church has 
a rather singular tower, and contains a remark- 
able oak chest and some communion-plate of 
Spanish repousse work, given in 1665 by the 
Dudley family. 



CHAPTER IV 

FURTHER VILLAGES OF THE 
DISTRICT 

CLIFFORD CHAMBERS - HENLEY-IN-ARDEN -WOOTTON 
WAWEN-ALCESTER-COUGHTON -EVESHAM -BROAD- 
WAY-CHIPPING camden-welford-abbot's sal- 
ford. 

/CLIFFORD CHAMBERS, a little village 
^^ two or more miles from Stratford, should 
be visited, if only for the sake of seeing the 
charming half-timbered vicarage which it pos- 
sesses. During the year 1 564, the year it will 
be remembered of William Shakespeare's birth, 
this house is known to have been occupied by a 
John Shakespeare. This was the year in which 
the plague visited Stratford and made cruel havoc 
amongst its inhabitants, and some have thought 
that the John Shakespeare who resided at Clif- 
ford Chambers was none other than the poet's 
father, and that he had removed his wife and 
family to this village so that they might be out 
of harm's way. Indeed, it has even been sug- 
gested that the poet may have been born here, 
and not in Stratford at all. There is, however, 
no evidence to prove that the John Shakespeare 

63 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

of Clifford Chambers was other than a namesake 
of him of Henley Street, Stratford, and in the 
face of the constant tradition respecting the 
birthplace of the poet, it would require a great 
deal more proof than is likely to be forthcoming 
to establish the claim of any rival spot. 

Henley-in-Arden is a small market- town, 
eight miles from Stratford, which is now losing, 
under the influence of the recently constructed 
railway and the ubiquitous cycle, the quiet remote 
appearance which it possessed only a few years 
ago. As its suffix shows, this was one of the 
little towns of the great forest of Arden. It 
possesses a market-cross of the fifteenth century 
and a church, destitute of any special features of 
interest. About a quarter of a mile, however, 
from the town lies Beaudesert, a place well worth 
a visit. On approaching it will be seen the 
earthworks known as the Mount, within which 
was a castle erected by Thurstan de Montfort 
in the twelfth century and demolished during the 
Wars of the Roses. This elevation should be 
ascended for the sake of the view, which in- 
cludes Edge Hill, the Cotswolds and Malvern 
with a charming prospect of Henley in the 
immediate foreground. Indeed it would be diffi- 
cult to find a more delightful view in Warwick- 
shire attainable at so slight an expense of climbing. 
The Mount is divided into three portions by two 
cross ditches. That part which is farthest from 
the village and has by far the steepest sides was 
no doubt the site of the keep. Lying at the foot 
of the earthworks is the little church of Beau- 

64 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

desert, probably built by de Montfort as the 
castle church, which, though restored, contains 
much Norman work. The tower is of the 
fifteenth century, but the walls of the nave and 
chancel are Norman with some inserted fourteenth 
century windows. The east window is Norman 
with star, zig-zag and indented mouldings, and 
the chancel arch is a fine, though much restored 
specimen of the same period. It is recessed and 
ornamented with zig-zag, wave and tooth mould- 
ings. The groining of the chancel is modern 
though it follows the lines of the original design. 
There are two small splayed Norman windows 
in the north wall of the church, which is five feet 
thick. There is a holy water stoup on the east 
side of the south door, of the same period as 
is the much restored doorway itself. The north 
doorway has a plain semicircular head. 

WooTTON-wAWEN, a pretty village traversed 
by the river Alne, two miles nearer to Stratford, 
once, as its name tells us, one of the frontier 
villages of the southern fringes of the great forest 
of Arden. A Benedictine priory was founded 
here in early times as a cell to the Abbey of 
Conches in Normandy, and at the dissolution 
of the alien priories in the reign of Edward 
III., this shared the fate of the others of its 
kind. Its revenues were first granted by Richard 
II. to the priory of St Anne, near Coventry, 
and subsequently by Henry VI. to King's Col- 
lege, Cambridge. Wootton Hall, which is the 
property of the Smythe family, is a building 
in the Italian style of the seventeenth century, 
E 65 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

with a Catholic chapel attached. The church 
of Wootton, which is most charmingly situated, 
is of great interest on account of the considerable 
remains of pre-Conquest architecture which it 
possesses. These consist of the wall and a 
blocked semicircular-headed doorway, on the 
north side, and some rubble-work on the south, 
together with the two lower stages of the centrally 
situated tower, which stands on four extremely 
valuable and characteristic arches of pre-Norman 
work, though that at the north has been partly 
built up to form a window. The west arch is 
masked by the much altered oak screen which 
lies against the wall to the west of it. On 
either side of this screen, and forming a part 
of its construction, are two' enclosed pews of 
carved oak, which may have been originally 
intended for chantry chapels, three brackets for 
figures existing at the east end of either. The 
clerestory, which is of the fifteenth century, is 
raised on a wall and pier-arches of the fourteenth. 
At the east end of the chancel is a large decor- 
ated window, the external edges of its jambs and 
architrave exhibiting an unusual form of decora- 
tion in the shape of a continuous series of crockets 
set in a hollow moulding. The Perpendicular 
window at the west end of the nave has corbel 
heads internally, representing King Edward III. 
and Queen Philippa. The pulpit is of carved 
oak of the fifteenth century. In the chancel 
there is a recumbent alabaster effigy of the time 
of Henry V., which probably represents John 
Harewell, ob. 1428. Another member of the 
66 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

same family, John Harewell (ob. 1506) and 
Anna, his wife, are commemorated by an altar 
tomb surmounted by a slab of dark stone, with 
inlaid brass effigies of the above-mentioned couple 
and their five sons and five daughters. The 
chantry chapel opens out of the chancel and has 
a highly decorated but unfinished piscina. On 
the floor is a plain slab to the memory of William 
Somerville, the author of that once well-known 
poem " The Chase," who was born 1692. It 
bears the following inscription, said to be his own 
composition : — 

" H.S.E. Gulielmus Somervile, armig. obiit, 17° 
Julii, 1742. Si quid in me boni compertum 
habeas imitare. Si quid mali totis viribus 
evita. Christo confide. Et scias te quoque 
fragilem esse et mortalem." 

Other objects of interest in the church are a fine 
old chest, with double fleur-de-lis iron work upon 
it, and a long desk with eight books chained to it. 

Alcester lies on the river Arrow, a few miles 
above its junction with the Avon, and about 
eight miles from Stratford. It is situated on 
the Ryknield street, and has been identified with 
the Roman station Alauna. Num^erous relics of 
the Roman occupation have been found in its 
neighbourhood. It was a place of royal residence 
in Saxon times, and here Ecguin, founder and 
abbot of Evesham Abbey, preached Christianity 
to the Saxons. Here also a general synod was 
held, at which Bertwald, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, and Wilfred, Archbishop of York, were 

67 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

present, and at which the endowments of the 
Abbey of Evesham were confirmed. A Bene- 
dictine monastery, afterwards made a cell to 
Evesham, was founded here in 1 1 40, by Ralph 
de Boteler. The church was built in the com- 
mencement of the thirteenth century, but of the 
original structure only the tower of the fifteenth 
century remains, the rest having been rebuilt in 
1732, when the church was rededicated to St 
Nicholas, the original ascription having been to 
St Andrew. The roof is supported by six 
Doric columns, and the organ chamber is separ- 
ated from the church by a carved oak screen 
of the Tudor period, which came originally from 
Warwick Castle. Under the tower are a brass 
chandelier given by the then Bishop of Worces- 
ter in 1733, and a white marble statue of Sir 
Hamilton Seymour (ob. 1880) from the chisel of 
Count Gleichen. At the west end of the north 
aisle is the tomb of Sir Foulke Grevill (ob. 
1559) and his wife, Elizabeth f(ob. 1560), and 
at the east end of the south aisle is the cenotaph 
of Francis, second Marquis of Hertford (ob. 
1822), with a figure of the Marquis by Chantrey. 
CouGHTON, two miles north of Alcester, was 
one of the frontier places of the Forest of Arden, 
and at the present time there is at the corner of 
the park, enclosed within iron railings, the foot 
and part of the shaft of a cross at which it is 
said travellers used to pray before adventuring 
upon the many perils of the forest. The Manor- 
house, which is the property of the Throck- 
morton family, is really only " that stately 
68 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

castle-like Gatehouse of freestone '' mentioned 
by Dugdale, with superadded wings of the date 
of 1780. The central part or gatehouse was 
built by Sir George Throckmorton in the reign 
of Henry VIII., the entire structure consisting 
of a quadrangle into which the gateway led. It 
suffered greatly during the Civil War, and was 
repaired and considerably altered during the 
reign of Charles II. by Sir Francis Throck- 
morton. The chapel, which occupied the east 
side of the quadrangle, was wrecked by a mob 
from Alcester in 1688, at the time of the ex- 
pulsion of James II., the Throckmorton family 
having always remained adherents of the Catholic 
religion. The moat was filled up, the gateway 
converted into a hall, and the wings added by 
Sir Robert Throckmorton in 1780. The gate- 
house is a splendid example of its class, with 
tall octagonal turrets. Over the door is the in- 
scription, " Nisi Dominus edificaverit domum, 
in vanum laboraverunt qui edificant earn.'' Over 
the inner entrance is " Nisi Dominus custodierit 
domum frustra vigilat qui custodit eam." The 
Hall, which is of course the ground floor of the 
gatehouse, has fan-tracery vaulting. The turret 
in the north-east corner of the Tower chamber 
contains, like so many of the old houses of the 
Midlands, a priest's hiding-place, in which a 
portable altar-stone with its consecration crosses 
was found some time ago. It is now in the 
beautiful Catholic church which has been erected 
in the grounds of the court. There is some 
fine tapestry in one of the bedrooms, and many 

69 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

family pictures on the walls of the rooms. At 
the back of the court are further portions of the 
old work. 

Evesham situated on the Avon, about twelve 
miles, as the crow flies, from Stratford, is a place 
with many historical associations. In the days 
of Ethelred, King of Mercia, Eoves, a swineherd 
in the service of Ecguin, Bishop of Worcester, 
seeking some of his lost charge in the forest of 
Arden, was favoured by a vision of three 
maidens who appeared to him in a blaze of 
light. Returning home he informed his master, 
the Bishop, of what he had seen, who, having 
prepared himself by prayer and fasting, set out 
for the same spot, and was rewarded by the 
same vision, which he declared to be the Virgin 
Mary and two attendant angels. In obedience 
to the Virgin's instructions he founded an Abbey 
on the spot, resigned his Bishopric and became 
its first Abbot. Such is the legend which 
accounts for the first foundation of the Abbey, 
and for its name of Eoves-ham. The first 
hundred years of its existence appear to have 
been quiet and prosperous, until in an incursion 
of the Danes it was completely destroyed. At 
what date it was rebuilt is not known, but it 
was evidently in existence in 941, since in that 
year the monks were replaced by secular canons. 
After various struggles, in some of which the 
celebrated St Dunstan was a participant, the 
Benedictines finally recovered possession early 
in the eleventh century. After this date many 
distinguished men filled the position of Abbot, 
70 




0eil'Tom^^=^m 



Wj^c dM^ 




VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

amongst whom may be mentioned Reginald 
and Thomas de Marlberg, noteworthy for the 
buildings which they erected, and Richard le 
Gras, Chancellor of England under Henry Til. 
In 1514 Clement Lichfield was Abbot, and in 
his time the existing solitary bell-tower, which 
was also the gateway to the burying-ground, was 
built. In 1539 he was forced to hand over the 
Abbey to Cromwell, at which time, says Grose, 
" we have every reason to conclude that out of 
Oxford and Cambridge there was not to be 
found so great an assemblage of religious build- 
ings in the Kingdom." So great and beautiful 
were they that even the heart of Cromwell was 
touched, and he wished to preserve them for 
educational purposes, but Henry VIII. was ob- 
durate and granted the lands to Sir Philip Hoby, 
who let out the Abbey as a stone quarry. As a 
result, the stones of the Abbey are to be met with 
in many of the older houses of Evesham, and of 
all its magnificent buildings only the bell-tower, 
the almonry, the gatehouse and the entrance 
arch of the chapter-house, survive to the present 
day. Walter of Evesham and John Feckenham 
may be mentioned as well-known personages 
who received their education in the Abbey. 

The great and decisive battle of Evesham 
was fought on August the 4th, 1265, about 
three-quarters of a mile from the town on the 
higher ground, called Green-hill, between the 
roads to Worcester and to Birmingham. Prince 
Edward, on the one side, and Simon de Mont- 
fort, who held King Henry III. a prisoner, on 

71 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

the other, were the opposing leaders, and the 
issue of the conflict was the complete defeat of 
the Earl, who, with his son Henry and Hugh 
le Despenser were slain, and buried before the 
High Altar of the Abbey. An obelisk marks 
the site of the battle, and a well, the Battle-well, 
is said to indicate the spot where the Earl died. 
Robert of Gloucester gives an account of the 
battle from which the following lines may be 
quoted : 

" But at the end that side was beneath that feebler was, 
And Sir Simon was slain and his folk all to ground. 
More murder was never before in so little stound, 
For first there was sir Simon de Montfort slain, alas, 
And sir Henry his son, that so gentle knight was. 
And sir Hugh the Despencer, the noble justice. 
And sir Peirs of Montfort, that strong was and wise, 
Sir William de Perons and sir Ralph Basset also, 
Sir John of Saint John, sir John Dive too, 
Sir William Trussell, sir Gilbert of Enfield, 
And many a good body was slain there in that field. 
And among all others most ruth it was ido. 
That sir Simon the old man dismembered was so, 
For sir William Mautravers (thanks have he none) 
Carved off his feet and hands and his limbs many one. 

And his head they smote off and to Wigmore it sent, 
To dame Maud the Mortimer who right foully it 

shent ; 
But though that men limbed him, he bled not, men 

said, 
And the hair-cloth was to his body nearest weed. 
Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle none 

it was, 
And therewith Jesus Christ well ill pleased was. 
As He showed by tokens (both) grisly and good." 

It will be clearly seen from some of these lines, 
72 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

and from other parts of the poem, that the people 
were inclined to exalt the Earl to the position 
of a saint, which they were expressly forbidden 
to do by the Ban of Kenil worth (see p. 129). 
During the Civil War the town was garrisoned 
for the King, who spent some days there in 1644. 

The town of Evesham is separated from the 
neighbouring parish of Bengeworth by the river 
Avon, here crossed by a modern bridge. This 
is a favourite point for boating trips, and a row 
down the river will well reward the visitor, 
especially in the early spring time when the 
orchards, for which the Vale of Evesham is so 
celebrated, are in full blossom. At this time of 
year, on a favourable day, from an eminence a 
little way off the town, it and the district im- 
mediately surrounding it seem to be smothered 
in snow, so great is the wealth of the blossom. 

A Norman gateway, which possesses semi- 
circular arches on either side, leads from the 
market place into the present churchyard. It 
was converted early in the eighteenth century into 
a dwelling-house by its then possessor and practi- 
cally destroyed. To its south-west stands the 
almonry, a stone building, part of which is 
almost in its original condition. The Bell-tower, 
at present the chief architectural glory of Eves- 
ham, was rescued from the destroyer by its 
purchase by the inhabitants. It is a fine Per- 
pendicular erection no feet in height. " It is 
divided on the east and west fronts into three 
compartments, the lowest being almost filled by 
the great archway, the middle one containing 

73 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

one large window, and the upper one, two some- 
what narrower. Doorway and windows alike 
are surmounted by ogee canopies ; and the whole 
of these fronts are covered with panelled mullions. 
At each corner are two strong panelled but- 
tresses, reaching to the parapet, which is em- 
battled and pierced, and is crowned with elabor- 
ately ornamented pinnacles." ( Bayliss. ) Not far 
from the river is the archway which formerly 
led into the chapter-house, but is now the 
entrance to allotment gardens. It is greatly 
mutilated, but its architrave contains a double 
row of niches in which are the fragments of 
twenty figures. It was built by John de Broke- 
hampton (1282-131 6). The two churches in 
the churchyard were both of them founded by 
the monks as secular chapels, and were supplied 
from the monastery with chaplains and also with 
candles and all necessaries of worship. The 
Church of St Lawrence was consecrated during 
the abbacy of de Brokehampton in the year 1295, 
and had been almost entirely rebuilt before its 
restoration in the early part of this century. All 
Saints, the second church, must have been in 
existence in 1223, since the Institutes of Abbot 
Ranulf contain an account of the allowance of 
its chaplain for bread and bear. The north 
aisle and the chancel are referred to this date, 
the rest of the church exhibiting specimens of 
almost all later periods. Clement Lichfield, the 
last Abbot, is buried in this church, in a chantry 
which he himself erected and which communi- 
cates with the south aisle. 

74 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

In the market place there is an exceedingly 
picturesque Booth Hall, and both the High and 
Bridge Streets contain many ancient houses well 
worthy of inspection. Bengeworth, on the 
opposite side of the Avon, was the seat of a 
castle belonging in 1 1 50 to William de Beau- 
champ, who, having plundered the Abbey Church, 
was excommunicated by the Abbot, his castle 
razed to the ground and its site turned into a 
cemetery. 

Broadway, six miles south-east of Stratford, 
is an excellent and most characteristic example 
of a Cotswold village, full of houses exhibiting 
the type of architecture met with throughout 
that district, a type rendered possible, no doubt, 
by the unlimited supply of an easily worked 
building-stone which is to be obtained in every 
part of it. Any person with a little time to 
spare will find it very far from wasted if spent 
upon the exploration of the many charming and 
interesting villages, though remote and difficult of 
access, scattered amongst these hills. Such ex- 
ploration is not within the power of all visitors to 
the Midlands ; but those who reach Stratford and 
have the time should at least not neglect to see 
Broadway, which can be easily reached by road 
from that town. Unfortunately, like most of the 
beautiful old villages in this country, its charms 
are rapidly being destroyed, and those who knew 
Broadway twenty or even ten years ago will find 
it now an altered and much deteriorated spot, 
but it still contains matter of sufficient interest to 
render it well worthy of a visit. 

75 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

This village is first heard of in history as a 
manor of the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at 
Pershore. In the charter of King Edgar to the 
Abbey mention is made of twenty manses in 
Bradanwege, and the value and extent of the 
land are again stated in Domesday Book. At 
the period of the dissolution of the Abbey, its 
property in Broadway exceeded in extent and in 
value that in any other place. In 1538 part of 
the property was leased to R. Sheldon who held 
the Court, a fragment of which, connected with 
a house quite recently erected, remains near the 
old church. 

King Charles is said to have stopped several 
times at the Lygon Arms, a fine old house 
which will at once attract the attention of the 
traveller near the lower end of the village. This 
house also contains an oak-panelled room, tradi- 
tionally associated with the name of Cromwell. 
The Sheldons, who were the owners of the 
Court, were Royalists, and their house, which 
was a rallying point for the adherents of that 
party in the district, was destroyed by the 
Parliamentary forces, a trench in a field on the 
hill above the house having probably served for 
the defence of- the artillery employed. Frag- 
ments of the carved stones of the Court are to 
be found in the adjacent mill, in Pye Corner, 
a house near at hand, and in other parts of the 
village. An extremely interesting building, the 
Manor-house of the Abbot of Pershore, now the 
property of Mr Millet, the well-known artist, is 
situated at the lower end of the village. The 

76 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

medigsval portion of it dates back to the reign of 
Edward TIL, and contains a large hall originally 
open from floor to roof, and a solar, in which are 
the remains of a fireplace and two remarkably 
splayed windows, from which a view of the hall 
could be obtained. There is also a chapel which 
had east, north, and south windows ; it was like 
many such places, of very small size, and so a 
kind of hagioscope was placed in the west wall, 
opposite the altar, by means of which those 
in the hall could assist at the Mass, when cele- 
brated in the chapel. This remarkable aperture 
was circular and formerly contained tracery. 
The south wing is of later date and has been 
assigned to the sixteenth century. Higher up 
the village, near the Willersey road, is another 
old house with fragments of fourteenth century 
work, which Mr J. R. Holliday thinks may 
have been the Bailiff's house, and near this, 
until a few years ago when it was pulled down to 
make way for a shop, there was a fine fifteenth 
century barn with buttresses and cross-looped 
lights. In the main street and nearly opposite 
the Bailiff's house is another fine building with 
bay windows, Tudor House, formerly an inn, 
the Crown and Angel. At the top of the 
village is another fine old house carefully restored, 
the Residence of M. de Navarro, better known 
under her maiden name of Miss Mary Anderson. 
The old church of St Eadburgh, now seldom 
used, is situated about three-quarters of a mile 
from the main part of the village, and contains a 
Norman font, some interesting brasses and a good 

77 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

pulpit. There is here a Passionist Monastery 
at which the late Cardinal Manning made his 
retreat before being consecrated Archbishop of 
Westminster. The visitor should climb the hill 
to the tower, erected in 1 797 by a Lady Coventry; 
it forms a prominent land-mark, and from its 
summit a truly magnificent view can be obtained. 
The Malvern Hills stand well up in the distance 
and the whole of the fertile Vale of Evesham is 
spread out below like a map. Below the tower 
and half way up the hill from the old church will 
be seen the house called Middle Hill, now the 
property of Mr Flower of Stratford-on-Avon, 
but formerly the residence of the late Sir 
Thomas Phillips, the well-known antiquary. It 
was from his press here that a number of singu- 
larly printed and privately issued books came 
forth. 

Chipping Camden, about five miles north-east 
of Broadway and between it and Stratford-on- 
Avon, is a most interesting and picturesque 
market town, once busy with the trade of wool- 
stapling, now as quiet and somnolent a spot as 
can well be imagined. Like other places with a 
similar prefix it derives the first part of its name 
from the Anglo-Saxon ceapan, to buy, the term 
being equivalent to that of market, prefixed to 
the names of places in other parts of England. 
The second part of the name is said to be de- 
rived from a camp in the neighbourhood, occu- 
pied at the time of an important engagement 
between the Mercians and the West Saxons 
which took place here. In 689 it was the scene 

78 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

of a conference between the rulers of the 
Heptarchy respecting a treaty with the Britons. 
It is thus a place of great antiquity, but its 
period of greatest prosperity was during the 
fourteenth century, when it was one of the great 
centres of the then surpassingly important trade 
of wool- stapling, great quantities of that com- 
modity, shorn from the backs of the Cotswold 
sheep, being annually exported to Flanders. 

The Court, of which fragments only remain, 
was built in the fifteenth century by Sir Baptist 
Hickes, an ancestor of the Camden family. It 
was destroyed during the Civil War by its owner, 
lest it should be occupied by the Parliamentarian 
troops. 

Sir Baptist Hickes, whose monument is in the 
church and whose name will be read, as its 
donor, upon the fine brass lectern, was the first 
Viscount Camden. He founded and endowed 
an almshouse, situated near the church and court, 
for six old men and six old women, rebuilt 
the market - house, and on these and other 
charitable objects is said to have spent ;^io,ooo 
during his lifetime. The main street of the town 
contains many interesting houses, and particularly 
two of the fifteenth century, nearly opposite to 
one another near the north end of the town. 
One of these, which possesses a fine bay window, 
belonged to the family of Greville. The church, 
which is Perpendicular in character, has been 
fully restored ; it has a very striking tower built 
in the sixteenth century and generally regarded 
as one of the last buildings of the traditional 

79 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Gothic. It possesses a south chapel which 
contains some remarkable tombs to members of 
the Camden family — (i) an altar tomb, with 
recumbent effigies of Baptist, first Viscount 
Camden, already mentioned, and his wife, said 
to be the work of N. Stone ; ( 2 ) a remarkable 
though strikingly ugly pair of erect figures of 
Noel Viscount Camden (ob. 1642) and his 
wife ; and ( 3 ) by far the most beautiful, a 
bust of Lady Penelope Noel. 

The church itself contains several good brasses 
to the memory of defunct wool- staplers, on 
which the trading-mark of each will be found 
as in the case of other similar brasses at North- 
leach and elsewhere. One of the brasses at 
Camden describes William Grevel (Greville), 
to whose memory it was erected and who died 
in 1 40 1, as the flower of all the wool-merchants 
of England. He and his wife Marion are re- 
presented in the dress of the period under two 
canopies. In the chancel is the tomb of Sir 
Thomas Smith (ob. 1593), who is represented 
with his two wives and fifteen children. 

Welford, a village in a different direction 
from those last dealt with, is situated on the 
Avon about mid-way between Stratford and 
Bidford. It is composed mainly of pretty 
thatched cottages with bright gardens attached 
to them. The principal object of interest is the 
Maypole, which is seventy-five feet in height, 
painted in continuous spiral bands of red, white 
and blue from top to bottom. A Maypole has 
been a village possession for many years, though 
80 



VILLAGES OF THE DISTRICT 

the present pole is only about a year old, having 
replaced the previous one which was blown 
down the year before in a severe gale. 

Abbot's Salford, a village on the Avon 
below Bidford, contains an exceedingly pic- 
turesque old house called Salford Hall, or more 
frequently in the locality, " The Old Nunnery," 
from the fact that it was occupied by a com- 
munity of Benedictine nuns from Cambrai, from 
the year 1807 to 1838, when they removed to 
Stanbrook, near Worcester. The original house 
on this site, of which no traces remain, according 
to the Rev. A. L. Chattaway, who is the author 
of a monograph on the place, was in existence 
in the twelfth century, and belonged, like the 
land around, to the Abbey of Evesham. Many 
entries concerning this property exist in the 
records of the Abbey. The second building 
erected by the monks late in the fifteenth century 
was of half-timber, like so many others of its 
period, and substantial portions of this edifice 
still remain. At the dissolution the Abbey 
house passed to one Philip Hoby or Hobby, 
who had been ambassador from Henry VIII. 
to the Emperor Charles V., and who was also 
the grantee of Evesham Abbey itself, who sold 
it to a certain Anthony Littleton. His daughter 
and heir married John Alderford, who was the 
builder of the present house, which is of stone 
with mullioned windows, and was finished in 
1602, not 1662, as a date over the main entrance 
would lead one to suppose. This date is the 
mistake of a stone-mason in the early part of the 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

century. The motto, " Moderata Durant," over 
the same entrance is that of the Alderford family, 
whose coat-of-arms, with others, is to be seen in 
the glass of one of the hall windows. There is 
a Catholic chapel in the house which has been in 
existence since 1727, and the staircase and many 
of the rooms are of considerable interest. 



82 



CHAPTER V 
WARWICK 

THE CASTLE— ST NICHOLAS' CHURCH-ST JOHn's 
HOSPITAL-ST MARy's CHURCH. 

/^ AMD EN and Dugdale have both suggested 
^^ that Warwick was a place of importance 
during the Roman occupation, but the evidence 
for this theory is so slight that it may be dis- 
missed. As its name tells us, it was a town 
or village during the Saxon period ; indeed it 
is stated that St Dubritius set up his episcopal 
chair at a church, which was dedicated to All 
Saints, within the works which afterwards de- 
veloped into the Castle, in the year 544. The 
history of the Castle and of the town, for naturally 
the two are bound up with one another, may be 
said to have commen<:ed in 914, when Aethel- 
flaed, daughter of Aelfred the Great and Lady 
of Mercia, a most energetic constructor of forti- 
fications in the Midlands, to whom, amongst 
many other buhrs, those at Tamworth and 
Stafford are due, commenced the construction 
of military works at Warwick. If the account 
of St Dubritius and the earthworks in his day is 
true, then Aethelflaed's labours would have been 

83 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

confined to the strengthening of already existing 
fortifications, and this is quite likely to have been 
the case. At any rate she was largely respon- 
sible for the erection of the great mound which 
still exists at the northern end of the Castle and 
which bears her name. On this she is said to 
have erected a strong fortification called the 
Dungeon. On this earthen fortress was later 
erected a keep of which traces still exist; it 
probably dates from about the time of the 
Conquest when the works are said to have been 
considerably enlarged and the fortifications of 
the town improved by Turchil, lord of the 
place at that period. 

Since then Warwick Castle has borne its part 
in most of the strifes and contests which have 
torn this country, and in times of peace has 
shared in the pageants and displays which mark 
royal visits and progresses. In the reign of 
King Stephen, Gundreth, widow of Roger de 
Newburgh, to which family the title of Earl of 
Warwick then belonged, expelled the king's 
soldiers from the Castle and handed it over to 
Henry Duke of Normandy, afterwards Henry II. 
During the Wars of the Barons, William de 
Mauduit, the title having passed to that family 
through that of de Plessetis, who took the king's 
side, was surprised in 1264 by Sir John Giffard, 
governor of the neighbouring castle of Kenil- 
worth, and with his wife taken prisoner. The 
walls, but not the towers of the Castle were 
destroyed on this occasion. Two years later 
Henry III. was here, whilst gathering an army 

84 



WARWICK 

for the siege of Kenil worth, which was at that 
time held in the interests of the barons (see p. 
129). Guy, "The Black Dog of Arden," 
Earl of Warwick, of the de Beauchamp family, 
which now held the title, repaired the fortifica- 
tions in the reign of Edward I. In the follow- 
ing reign the same Guy, in company with the 
Earl of Lancaster, having taken Piers Gaveston 
prisoner in 131 2, brought him to Warwick 
Castle, where, probably in the Great Hall, he 
was tried and condemned to death, by the above- 
mentioned lords, with the Earls of Gloucester, 
Hereford, and Arundel. On the next morning 
he was taken to Blacklow Hill, about one mile 
from the town, and there beheaded ; his head 
rolling down into a thicket, is said to have been 
picked up by a " friar preacher,'' who carried it 
off in his hood (see p. 124). Two years later, 
on the death of Guy, the custody of the Castle 
was entrusted to Hugh le Despenser, who enter- 
tained King Edward II. therein 1326. The 
outer walls, with some of the towers, including 
that splendid piece of military architecture known 
as Caesar's Tower, were built by Thomas de 
Beauchamp in Edward III.'s reign, but it was 
his second son and successor, also a Thomas de 
Beauchamp, who built the tower, called after 
Guy the mythical warrior of Warwick. In 
1 41 7, Richard de Beauchamp entertained 
Henry V. in the Castle. On the death of this 
Earl the title came into the possession of Richard 
Neville, who was by descent Earl of Salisbury, 
by his marriage with Anne, daughter to Robert 

85 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

de Beauchamp. This great Earl, better known 
as " the King-Maker,'' 

" Proud setter-up and puller-down of kings," 

captured Edward IV. at Wolvey, a place in 
Warwickshire, to the east of Coventry, and 
brought him, in 1469, a prisoner to Warwick, 
whence he was subsequently removed to Middle- 
ham in Yorkshire, another of Warwick's castles. 
Richard III. stayed in the Castle in 1483, and 
again in the next year. In the reign of Ed- 
ward VI. the Castle came into the possession of 
the Dudley family, and Ambrose, the " Good 
Earl of Dudley," whose tomb is in the Beau- 
champ Chapel, entertained Queen Elizabeth in 
1572, and again in 1575. There is a tradition, 
which is probably accurate, that Amy Robsart 
was a guest in the Castle in or about 1588. In 
1605, the Castle having been for some time in 
the possession of the Crown, to which it reverted 
on the death of Ambrose Dudley without issue, 
and having fallen into a state of considerable 
ruin, was granted by King James I. to Sir Fulke 
Greville. Sir Fulke was created Baron Brooke 
in 1621 ; and Francis, the eighth Baron, was 
advanced to an Earldom in 1746. The title of. 
Earl of Warwick was at this time in the Rich 
family, which was, however, in no way con- 
nected with that of the old possessors of the 
title, nor at any time the owner of any of its 
estates. This family becoming extinct in 1759, 
the Earl Brooke became the Earl of Warwick. 
Sir Fulke Greville is said to have expended 
86 



WARWICK 

;2^30,ooo on the repairing and adorning of the 
Castle, and entertained James I. there on four 
occasions, viz., in 1617, 1619, 1621 and 1624. 
On the first of these visits the king partook of 
a sumptuous banquet in the Hall of Leicester's 
Hospital, an occurrence which is commemor- 
ated by the following inscription placed in that 
building : 

" Memorandum that King James the First was 
right nobly entertained at a supper in this 
hall, by the Honourable Sir Fulk Greville, 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one of 
his Majesty's most honourable Privy Coun- 
cil, upon the fourth day of September, 
Anno Dom. 161 7. God save the King." 

During the Civil Wars, Robert Greville, 
Lord Brooke, Sir Fulke's successor, took the 
side of the Parliamentary party, and the Castle 
was besieged by Royalist troops, under the Earl 
of Northampton. Lord Brooke was not at this 
time in the Castle, which was defended by Sir 
Edward Peto, who was governor in his absence. 
After the siege had been carried on for fourteen 
days, it was raised by Lord Brooke, as the 
result of a conflict with the Earl of Northamp- 
ton's forces at Southam, in the south of War- 
wickshire. After the battle of Edgehill the 
Earl of Lindsey died on his way to this castle, 
*' under whose portcullis his corpse entered side 
by side with that of his youthful and gallant 
enemy, Charles Essex" (Nugent's "Memorials 
of Hampden"). In 1695 William III. visited 

87 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Warwick, and George IV. whilst Prince Regent, 
Queen Adelaide, the present Sovereign and the 
Prince of Wales have all been entertained within 
the hospitable walls of the Castle. As far as 
regards the history of the town, as apart from 
that of the Castle, a few words alone are 
necessary. The town returned two members to 
Parliament from the time of Edward III., but 
it was not incorporated until the reign of Henry 
VIII. It now returns one member to Parlia- 
ment in common with Leamington. In 1649 
more than half the town was burnt down by 
a fire, which is said to have been originated by 
a spark from a burning piece of wood in the 
hands of a boy, which set fire to a thatched 
roof. The people removed their possessions 
for safety to the Church of St Mary, just as 
the inhabitants of London did theirs to St 
Paul's at the Great Fire of London, but with 
a similar want of success, for some of the 
articles brought there for preservation, being in a 
smouldering condition, set fire to the building, 
which with the exception of the chancel, the 
Beauchamp Chapel, and the chapter-house, was 
completely destroyed. Some years later the 
part of the town which had been destroyed was 
rebuilt, as the result of a national subscription 
amounting to ;£" 110,000, towards which sum 
Queen Anne subscribed ^^looo. 

The Castle, "that fairest monument of ancient 
and chivalrous splendour which yet remains unin- 
jured by time," to quote the words of Sir Walter 
Scott, may first be viewed from the bridge over 
88 



WARWICK 

the Avon, the river, the great walls and towers 
of the fortress, the ruined mill, and the piers of 
the ancient bridge, which formerly carried the 
traffic to Banbury, at its foot, making up a 
picture never to be forgotten. The entrance to 
the Castle is through a gate-house erected in 
1800, whence a road cut deep in the rock leads 
up to the outer court still called the Vineyard. 
At one time it really merited this name, for 
there is a record of the payment of the services 
of several women for five days' work at gather- 
ing grapes. On the right hand is to be seen 
Guy's tower, completed in 1394, and 128 feet 
in height. On the left is the remarkable work 
known as Caesar's tower, built between 1350 and 
1370, 147 feet high. It is built on the solid 
rock, and has a sloping base on its outer front, 
so arranged that stones or other missiles dropped 
upon it from the machicolations would spring off 
it straight into the faces of the attacking forces. 
It is pierced with loopholes for the use of archers. 
The lowest part of the tower formed a dungeon, 
the walls of which are adorned with various 
drawings of shields, crucifixes, and bows, the 
work of those incarcerated therein. There are 
also several inscriptions, two of which relate to 
one Master John Smyth, " Gvner to His 
Maiestye Highnes," who was a prisoner from 
1642 to 1645. -^ third rudely scratched in- 
scription runs thus: — 

"WILLIAM SIdlaTE ROT This SAME 
AND if My PEN HAd Bin BETER foR 
HIS Sake I wovld HAVE MENdEd 
EVERRI leTTER." 
89 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

The gateway in the centre, through which 
admission is gained to the inner court, is a re- 
markable work of the fourteenth century, which 
was, of course, provided during its earlier history 
with a drawbridge over the moat in place of the 
present stone structure. The defences of the 
gateway are most skilfully arranged, for the work 
is, as was the case in other places, really a double 
gate with a small narrow sloping courtyard be- 
tween, which is exposed to the fire of missiles 
from a gallery on the inner face of the outer 
gateway or barbican. The outer and inner 
gateways are provided with portcullises and 
doors, and both are defended by loopholes. 
The barbican gate is provided with overhead 
apertures, through which boiling lead or other 
gentle deterrents could be dropped down on the 
assailants below. On entering the inner court, 
which is about two acres in extent, Aethelflaed's 
mount will be seen straight in front, with the 
Northern tower to the right and on the mound 
itself. The Hill tower is on the left, and in 
close connection with the dwelling part of the 
Castle. Looking to the right and to the left, the 
inner faces of Guy's and Caesar's towers will be 
seen. On the wall between the former and the 
mound are two incomplete towers, of which the 
nearer to the gatehouse is called the Bear tower, 
and was commenced by Richard IH., and the 
other the Clarence in memory of his brother, the 
ill-fated Duke, 

'< false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," 
to whom it owes its origin. 
90 



WARWICK 

The Great Hall is 62 feet by 35, and has 
an upper or clerestory set of windows, as well as 
the lower ones. It is probable that the upper 
windows originally lit a set of rooms above the 
hall, and approached by the octagonal turret 
which adjoins it. This room contains a number 
of specimens of armour, of which the first to be 
attended to are those attributed to Guy of War- 
wick. The following account of them from the 
pen of the late Mr Bloxam shows that it would 
have been difficult for them all to have belonged 
to the same individual. " The body and horse 
armour shows him to have been no ordinary 
mortal. We find a bascinet, or head-piece, of 
the time of Edward III., to have formed his 
helmet ; a Hungarian ' pavois ' or shield of the 
time of Henry VII. is reputed to be, and does 
duty as, his breast-plate, and a vizored wall- 
shield of the reign of James I. serves as his 
back-plate. A two-handed sword of the era of 
Henry VIII., five feet six inches long, is pointed 
out as wielded by him, while the shaft of a tilt- 
ing-lance, the earliest I have met with, served, 
if you will believe it, as his walking- staff. His 
lady, the fair Phyllis, has a pair of pointed 
slippered stirrups of iron, of the reign of Henry 
VI., ascribed to be her veritable slippers. As 
to Guy's horse-armour, an immense chanfron, 
or head-piece, a poitrail worn in front of the 
horse's breast, and a croupiere to defend the 
horse's flanks, are of more than usual magnitude, 
and of the reign of Henry VI., whilst his break- 
fast-cup or porridge-pot, with its fork, is a huge 

91 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

iron caldron of considerable antiquity, used for 
seething the flesh rations of the garrison." In 
the reign of Henry VHI. it is recorded that one 
William Hoggeson, a Yeoman of the King's 
Guard, was Keeper of the Sword, an office for 
which he received two pence a day. A small 
suit of armour which belonged to " the noble 
imp," Robert Lord Denbigh, son of the Earl of 
Leicester, is here shown. He is said, but pro- 
bably without any foundation, to have been 
poisoned by his nurse in the Castle, where he 
died aged between three and four years. The 
mace of Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick, the 
King-maker, and Cromwell's helmet, are objects 
of considerable interest. This hall suffered con- 
siderably from the fire which did so much damage 
in 1 87 1 ; the roof and floor are new, and the 
walls have been refaced. 

The State Apartments, which lead off from 
the Hall, commence with the Red Dranving- 
Rooniy so called from the colour of its wain- 
scotting, which contains some fine pieces of 
furniture, including a magnificent buhl clock, 
two buhl cabinets containing a collection of old 
china, and a cabinet of tortoise-shell and ebony 
inlaid with ivory, which formerly belonged to 
the Spinola family, a portrait of one of the 
members of which Ambrogio, by Rubens, hangs 
on the walls. Other noteworthy pictures are 
portraits of the Duke of Alva, and of the wife 
of Snyders by Van Dyck. 

The Cedar Dranving-Room is panelled and 
bordered with that wood, finely carved. The 
92 



WARWICK 

pictures in this room are all from the brush 
of Van Dyck, and include portraits of the Mar- 
chesa di Brignola and her son ; James Graham, 
Marquis of Montrose; Charles the First and 
Henrietta Maria. In this room is also a re- 
markable table from the Grimani Palace in 
Venice, adorned with the arms and honours of 
that family, with other ornamentations in pre- 
cious stones, such as agates, lapis lazuli, and the 
like inlaid on a slab of marble. There are also 
two beautiful early Italian marriage chests, the 
painting of which is worthy of careful attention. 

The Green Dranv'ing-Room possesses an ex- 
tremely fine plaster ceiling, and contains the 
following amongst other pictures — the Earl of 
Strafford, by Van Dyck ; a warrior by Moroni, 
an excellent example ; St Ignatius Loyola, 
founder of the Jesuit Order, vested for Mass 
in a scarlet chasuble, by Rubens, a picture for- 
merly in the Jesuit College at Antwerp ; and 
Prince Rupert, by Van Dyck. 

The State Bedroom contains a bedstead which 
with its appurtenances and the other furniture of 
the room was given to the second Earl of War- 
wick by George III. They had formerly been 
the property of Queen Anne, whose travelling 
trunk, marked with the letters A. R. and a 
crown, is also here. One of the walls has sus- 
pended upon it a fine piece of tapestry represent- 
ing the gardens at Versailles, made at Brussels in 
1 604. 

The Boudoir contains a portrait of Henry 
VIII. by Holbein, a work of the first merit; 

93 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

also a picture of the same king when a boy by 
Van Dyck. There is a portrait of Anne Boleyn 
by Holbein, and one of Barbara Villiers by Sir 
Peter Lely. In this room there is an interesting 
clock, once the property of Marie Antoinette, on 
which twelve scenes from the life of Christ are 
represented in enamel. 

The Armoury Passage contains a collection of 
armour and weapons, amongst which a coat of 
mail of which each link has its own rivet is the 
most remarkable object, and leads to the 

Compass Room, where, amongst other pictures, 
are Murillo's Laughing Boy and portraits of 
Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany, and his 
sister, by Lucas Cranach. From this room a 
passage leads to the private chapel of the Castle. 
The private apartments of the Castle, which are 
not shown to visitors, contain a number of valu- 
able pictures and a collection of manuscripts and 
other matters relating to Shakespeare's works. 

The visitor should not leave the precincts of 
the Castle without seeing, in the Conservatory, 
the far-famed " Warwick vase," which was 
purchased by the second Earl of Warwick, of 
the last creation, from his uncle. Sir William 
Hamilton. It was discovered in the bed of a 
small lake near Tivoli, and is attributed to 
Lysippus of Sicyon, a Greek artist of the close 
of the fourth century B.C. It is 5 ft. 6 in. in 
height, and 5 ft. 8 in. in diameter at its lip ; 
and its capacity is 163 gallons. 

The Church of St Nicholas is situated on 
the opposite side of the road to the Castle Gate- 

94 



WARWICK 

house. It was rebuilt in 1780, and is of the 
character which might be expected from its date. 
It contains a brass of Robert Willardsey, the 
first vicar of the original church, vested for 
mass, and bearing the date 1423. 

If the road called St Nicholas Church Street, 
which leaves that edifice on the right hand, be 
taken, an interesting building, called St John's 
Hospital, will be reached. It lies some little 
distance back from the road on the right hand 
side. The garden is separated from the street 
by iron railings and gate erected in the seven- 
teenth century. The house, which is slightly 
earlier than the railings, was built on the site of 
a hospital, the name of which it bears, which 
was founded in the reign of Henry II. by 
WilHam de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, for 
strangers and travellers, and for the poor and 
infirm. Its lands and endowments were en- 
gulfed with all other such trusts at the dissolution 
of the monasteries, and the site was granted in 
1563 by Queen Elizabeth to Anthony Stough- 
ton, whose grandson of the same name built the 
present exceedingly picturesque house. Turning 
back up Smith Street just before East Gate is 
reached, on the right hand will be seen the house 
in which Walter Savage Landor was born in 
1775, ^^^ father being a medical practitioner in 
the town. 

The East Gate, by the side of which the 
tramway from Leamington runs, is surmounted 
by the little Chapel of St Peter, an edifice 
which dates back to the reign of Henry VI., 

95 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

but which with the gateway itself was restored 
almost out of knowledge in 1788. 

Keeping on down Jury Street, which is the 
road straight on from the gate, and turning up 
Church Street on the right, the Church of St 
Mary is reached. The position which it occu- 
pies was once the site of a Saxon church, every 
vestige of which has, however, disappeared. In 
the reign of Henry I. Roger, Earl of Warwick, 
rebuilt the church, and the first Thomas de 
Beauchamp commenced the rebuilding of the 
choir in the time of Edward HI., a task which 
was completed by his son and successor, the 
second Thomas, in 1394. The burning and 
rebuilding of the greater part of the church has 
been already narrated, and the visitor can judge 
how unfortunate has been the taste which de- 
signed the nave. It would probably be difficult 
to find in any church of its importance more 
ungraceful windows than those by which it is lit. 
The tower is less terrible, but its details are poor, 
and the best that can be said of it is, that, on 
account largely of the eminence which the church 
occupies, it forms a striking object when viewed 
from a distance. 

The only object in the nave which calls for 
notice is a bust of Landor in a recess on the 
east face of one of the pillars near the west door. 
The transepts contain a number of monuments, 
amongst which, that of Thomas Oken and Joan 
his wife, a brass on the east wall of the north 
transept near the windows, should be noticed. 
He was a mercer in the town, who having made a 

96 



WARWICK 

fortune, left sums of money towards a number of 
local objects which are recorded on a tablet near 
by. The inscription on this brass is as follows : — 

** Of your charyte give thanks for the soules ot 
Thomas Oken and Jone his wyff, on whose 
soules Jesus hath mercy, Jesus hath mercy. 
Amen. Remember the charyte for the 
poor for ever. A° dni : mccccclxxiii." 

In the south transept is the entrance to the Beau- 
champ Chapel, which will be more particularly 
considered shortly, also a brass to Thomas de 
Beauchamp, the second Earl of Warwick, the 
builder of Guy's tower, who died 1401 and 
Margaret his wife (ob. 1 406). This was origin- 
ally placed upon an altar tomb which was de- 
stroyed at the fire. Here also is a monument to 
Henry Beaufoy, by his daughter, who was wife 
to Garth, the author of "The Dispensary." 
The chancel has a groined stone roof in four 
bays, it possesses sedilia and a piscina, and on 
the north side a remarkably fine example of an 
Easter Sepulchre, a receptacle in which the con- 
secrated Host was placed on Holy Thursday, 
and surrounded by lights was guarded by watchers 
until Easter Sunday morning. In the centre of 
the chancel is the fine altar tomb of Thomas de 
Beauchamp, the first, the founder of the choir, 
and his wife Katherine, who died in 1369, the 
same year as her husband. The recumbent effi- 
gies of the Earl and Countess, both of them 
striking figures, rest on the tomb, which pos- 
sesses also in niches round its sides thirty-six 
G 97 



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♦ 



small figures of members of the de Beauchamp 
family. Near this tomb is the grave of William 
Parr, Marquis of Northampton, who died 1571. 
He was the brother of Henry VIII.'s surviving 
consort, Katharine Parr. There is no inscrip- 
tion to mark the place of this interment. On 
the north side of the chancel is the vestry and a 
corridor which leads into the ancient chapter- 
house, which has around its sides nine seats under 
canopies. In connection with this building, it 
must be remembered that the church was a 
collegiate foundation, that is to say, the services 
of the church were carried on by a dean and a 
body of secular canons. In the centre of the 
chapter-house is the tomb of Fulke Greville, 
the first Lord Brooke, who died 1628. Around 
the edge of the slab is an inscription written 
by Sir Fulke, which runs : — 

" Fvlke Grevill, servant to Qveene Elizabeth, 
Concellor to King lames, and frend to 
Sir Philip Sidney. Trophaeum peccati." 

He met with a violent death as will be gathered 
from Dugdale's account : — " Delaying to reward 
one Hayward, an antient servant, that had spent 
the most of his time in attendance upon him, 
being expostulated with for so doing, received 
a mortall stab in the back, by the same man then 
private with him in his bed-chamber at Brook- 
house in London, 30 Sept., ann. 1628 who, to 
consummate the tragedy, went into another room, 
and having lockit the dore, pierced his own 
bo wells with a sword. After which — viz., 27 

98 



WARWICK 

Oct., the said Lord Brook's body being wrapt 
in lead and brought to Warwick, was there 
solemnly interred in a vault on the north side 
the Quire of S. Marie's Church, under that 
beautiful monument, erected by himself." 

The Lady Chapel, or as it is more generally 
called, the Beauchamp Chapel, is one of the 
most beautiful pieces of work of its kind, and, 
if there were nothing else of interest in the town 
of Warwick, would well repay a long journey 
made for its sole inspection. It is fortunate that 
it has suffered as little as it has at the hands 
of the despoilers, for the tombs are singularly 
intact, a fact for which we have no doubt in 
some measure to thank the adherence of the 
Lord Brook of the day to the Parliamentary side 
in the Civil War. Still the loss of the reredos 
and the images of gold which were on each side 
of it, and the destruction of so much of the old 
glass, and how fine that was we can judge from 
what remains, have considerably marred what 
must have been, in the days of its full glory, 
one of the most exquisite pieces of architecture 
and ornament in the kingdom if not in Europe. 
Its building was commenced in 1443, ^^^ fin- 
ished in 1464. It was consecrated in 147 5, 
and cost a sum of money estimated to have been 
equal of ;^40,ooo at our present-day value. It 
is entered by a series of steps from the south 
transept, through a porch on which will be 
seen the bear and ragged staff, the cognisance 
of the Leicester family. 

Above the entrance within is a small gallery 

99 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

which was intended for an organ-loft, and the 
panelling on this wall has at its upper part 
representations of animals and foliage. The 
north and south walls are also panelled and 
provided with oak stalls with much carving 
about them. At the east end are two empty 
niches which are believed to have originally held 
two figures of gold, each of which weighed 
twenty pounds. The eighteenth century rere- 
dos and canopy, which disfigure the east end 
of the chapel, take the place of one, the central 
figure of which was the Blessed Virgin and the 
Child. In the east window and in the tops 
of those on the north and south sides, there 
is some exceedingly fine old glass, the colour 
of that representing angels in the upper parts 
of the side windows being remarkably excellent. 
The groined roof is of the most elaborate char- 
acter, and has representations of the Virgin en- 
throned as Queen of Heaven, and of the armorial 
bearings of the founder and of the de Newburghs. 
Before leaving the chapel to view the chantry at 
its side, the tombs should be carefully examined. 
The first to attract attention will be that of the 
founder, which occupies the central position in 
the chapel, a tomb which takes its place amongst 
tbe finest examples of monumental work in the 
country. It is an altar tomb on which rests the 
effigy of Earl Richard de Beauchamp in gilded 
brass, covered by a hearse for a pall. The rich 
pall, which the tomb at one time possessed, was 
found some considerable time ago to be injuring 
the figures on account of its being constantly 

100 



WARWICK 

taken off for the inspection of visitors. It was con- 
sequently taken down and removed, and has un- 
fortunately disappeared. The figure of the Earl 
is represented in armour and wearing the Garter, 
his head rests upon his tilting-helmet, and his feet 
rest against a muzzled bear and a griffin. The 
hands are extended in the position adopted by the 
priest during a large part of the Mass and are 
not joined together as is commonly the case on 
such monuments. The lower part of the tomb 
is composed of Purbeck marble, divided into 
canopied compartments of which there are four- 
teen principal and eighteen minor. The latter 
contain figures of angels in brass gilt, each of 
whom carries a scroll on which is inscribed 
" Sit Deo laus et gloria : defunctis miseri- 
cordia." The larger figures are as follows 
commencing at the head of the tomb : — 

( 1 ) Cicely, his daughter-in-law, wife of Henry 

Beauchamp, with a scroll. 

(2) Henry Beauchamp, his son, husband to the 

last, with a book. 

(3) Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, with a 

scroll. 

(4) Edmund Beaufort, his son-in-law, Duke of 

Somerset, with a book. 

(5) Humphrey Staffiard, Duke of Buckingham. 

(6) John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, a son- 

in-law, with a book. 

(7 ) Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the King- 

maker, also a son-in-law, with a book. 

(8) George Neville, Lord Latimer, another 

son-in-law, with a rosary. 

lOI 



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(9) Elizabeth, his daughter, wife of the last, 

with a rosary also. 

(10) Ann, his daughter, wife of No. 7, with a 

rosary in one hand. 

(11) Margaret, a daughter, wife of No. 6, 

with a scroll. 

(12) Ann, wife of No. 5, with a rosary. 

(13) Eleanor, another daughter, wife of No. 4, 

with a book. 

(14) Alice, another daughter, wife of No. 3, 

with a rosary. 

The inscription round the tomb is as fol- 
lows : — 

"Preieth devoutly for the Sowel whom god 
assoille of one of the moost worshipful 
Knightes in his dayes of monhode & con- 
ning Richard Beauchamp, late Earl of 
Warrewik, lord Despenser of Bergevenny 
& of mony other grete lordships whos body 
resteth here vnder this tumbe in a fulfeire 
vout of stone set on the bare rooch the 
whuch visited with longe siknes in the 
Castel of Roan therinne decessed ful 
cristenly the last day of April the yer of 
oure lord god A mccccxxxix, he being at 
that tyme Lieutenant gen'al & governer of 
the Roialme of ffraunce and of the Duchie 
of Normandie by sufficient Autorite of oure 
Sou'aigne lord the King Harry the vi., the 
whuch body with grete deliberacon' & ful 
worshipful conduit Bi See And by lond 
was broght to Warrewik the iiii day of 
102 



WARWICK 

October the yer aboueseide and was leide 
with ful solemn exequies in a feir chest 
made of stone in this Chirche afore the 
west dore of this Chapel according to his 
last wille and Testament therin to rest til 
this Chapel by him devised i' his lifF were 
made Al the whuche Chapel founded on 
the Rooch And alle the membres therof 
his Executours dede fully make and 
Apparaille By the Auctorite of his Seide 
last Wille and Testament And therafter 
By the same Auctorite Theydide Trans- 
late fFul worshipfully the seide Body into 
the vout abouseide, Honnred be god 
therfore." 

According to Gough "about the middle of 
the seventeenth century the floor of our Lady's 
chapel fell in, and discovered the body perfect 
and fresh ; till, on the letting in of the air, it 
fell to decay. The ladies of Warwick made 
rings of the noble EarFs hair." 

To the right of this tomb is another and 
smaller altar tomb, on which rests the effigy of 
Ambrose Dudley, the good Earl of Warwick, 
wearing the Garter, and dressed in armour with 
a coronet on his head. His head is supported 
by a rolled- up mat, and his feet rest against a 
muzzled bear. The inscription upon this tomb 
is as follows : — 

" Heare under this tombe lieth the corps of the 
L. Ambrose Duddeley, who after the de- 
ceases of his elder bretheren without issue 
103 



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was Sonne and heir to John Duke of 
Northumberlande to whom Q : EHzabeth, 
in y® first yeare of her reigne, gave the 
Manor of Kibworth Beauchamp in the 
county of Leyc : to be helde by y^ service 
of being pantler to y® Kings & Qvenes of 
this Realme at their Coronations, which 
office & manor his said father & other his 
ancestors Erles of Warr : helde. In the 
second yeare of her reigne, y^ said Qvene 
gave him the office of Mayster of the 
Ordinavnce. In the fowrth yeare of her 
sayd reigne, she created him Baron Lisle 
and Erie of Warwyk. In the same yeare 
she made him her Livetenant Generall in 
Normandy, and dvringe the tyme of his 
service there he was chosen Knight of y^ 
Noble order of y^ Garter. In the Twelvth 
yeare of her reigne, y^ said Erie & Edward 
L : Clinton L : Admirall of England, were 
made Livetenantes Generall joinctely & 
severally of her Ma*'^^ army in the north 
partes. In the Thirteenth yeare of her 
reigne, the sayd Qvene bestowed on him 
y® office of Chief Bvtler of England, and 
in the xvth yeare of her reigne he was 
sworne of her Prevye Covnsell. Who 
departing this lief w%vt issue y^ xxi. day 
of Febrvary, 1589 at Bedford Howse, 
neare the city of London, from whence, 
as himself desired, his corps was conveyed 
and interred in this place neare his brother 
Robert E ; of Leyc : & others his noble 
104 



WARWICK 

ancestors, w''^ was accomplished by his 
last and wellbeloved wife y^ Lady Anne, 
Covntes of Warr : who in further testi- 
mony of her faythfvll love towardes him 
bestowed this Monvme't as a reme'brance 
of him.'' 

The next tomb which claims attention is that 
on the left side against the north wall, which 
commemorates the celebrated Robert Dudley, 
Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's "sweet 
Robin," the husband and possibly the murderer 
of Amy Robsart, the pretender to the hand of 
the sovereign, a man who, in the words of 
Froude, " combined in himself the worst qualities 
of both sexes. Without courage, without talent, 
without virtue, he was the handsome, soft, pol- 
ished, and attentive minion of the Court." 

He married Letitia, Countess of Essex, whose 
efRgy lies beside his own on the altar tomb. The 
Earl wears the mantle of the Garter and the Garter 
itself. The collar of the order of St Michael of 
France is round his neck and his feet rest against 
gauntlets. The Earl died in 1588 and the 
Countess survived him forty-six years, for she 
deceased at the age of ninety-four in the year 
1634. This tomb, which is a good example of 
the bad taste of the period, is decorated in 
colours, the figures especially being painted to 
resemble life. The inscription upon it is as 
follows : — 

"DEO VIVENTIUM S. SPE CERTA 
resurgendi in Christo hie situs est illus- 
105 



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trissimus Robertas Dudleyus, Johannis 
Ducis Northumbriae, Comitis Warwici, 
Vicecomltis Insulae &c. filius quintus, 
Comes Leicestriae, Baro Denbighiae, 
Ordinis turn S. Georgii cum S. Michaelis 
eques auratus, Reginae Elizabethae (apud. 
quam singular! gratia florebat) Hippocomus 
Regiae Aulae, subinde Seneschallus, ab 
intimis Conciliis : Forestarum, Parcorum, 
Chacearum &c. citra Trentam summus 
Justiciarius, Exercitus Anglici a dicta 
Regina Eliz. missi in Belgio, ab anno 
MDlxxxv. ad annum MDlxxxvii, Locum 
tenens & Capitaneus generalis : Provin- 
ciarum confederatarum ibidem Gubernator 
generalis & Praefectus, Regniq ; Angliae 
Locum tenens contra Philippum ii. His- 
panum, numerosa Classe & exercitu 
Angliam Anno M.Dlxxxviii, invadentem. 
Animam Deo servatori reddidit Anno 
Salutis M.Dlxxxviii, die quarto Septem- 
bris, Optimo & charissimo marito, moestis- 
sima uxor Leticia, Francisci Knolles 
Ordinis S. Georgii equitis aurati, & Regiae 
Thesaurarii. filia, amoris & conjugatis fidei 
ergo Posuit." 

The last tomb is against the south wall and 
near the east end of the chapel. It is also an 
altar tomb with the figure of a child upon it, 
the infant son of Robert, Earl of Leicester, who 
died before attaining his fourth year. A band 
with the cinquefoil, the Leicester badge, recog- 
io6 



WARWICK 

nisable on it, Is round his forehead, and the feet 
rest against a muzzled bear. The inscription on 
this tomb is as follows : — 

"Heere resteth the body of the noble Impe 
Robert of Dvdley bar' of Denbigh, sonne 
of Robert Erie of Leycester, nephew and 
heire vnto Ambrose Erie of Warwike, 
bretherne, bothe son'es of the mighty 
Prince lohn, late Dvke of Northvmber- 
land, that was covsin and heire to S"" John 
Grey Viscont Lysle, covsin and heire to 
S"" Thomas Talbot Viscont Lysle, nephew 
and heire vnto the Lady Margaret Covntesse 
of Shrewsbvry, the eldest davghter and 
coheire of the noble Erie of Warwike, 
S'' Richard Beavchamp heere enterrid, a 
childe of greate parentage, but of farre 
greater hope and towardnes, taken from 
this transitory vnto the everlasting life, in 
his tender age, at Wansted, in Essex, on 
Sondaye, the 19 of Ivly, in the yere of 
ovr Lorde God, 1584. Beinge the 
xxvith yere of the happy reigne of the 
most virtvovs and Godly Princis Qveene 
Elizabeth : and in this place layed vp 
emonge his noble avncestors, in the assvred 
hope of the generall resvrrection.'' 

On the north side of the chapel a short stair- 
case leads to an exceedingly interesting series of 
chambers. At the top of the stairs and to the 
right, that is at the east, is a very small chantry 
chapel, the roof of which is an exceedingly rich 
107 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

example of fan-tracery. There are two niches 
for figures, one on either side of the window at 
the east end. On the south it is separated from 
the Lady Chapel by a screen of open work, 
against which is affixed a most unusual piscina 
with a wooden stem or shaft. This little chapel 
is so small that it could only have been employed 
for low masses, and it was probably used for 
that purpose by those of the priests attached 
to the chantry who did not celebrate the High 
Mass at the Altar in the Lady Chapel itself. 
In this small chapel are a chest and several old 
helmets. Behind, that is to the west of the 
stairs, is a chamber fully continuous with the 
chapel in which are several old seats, traditionally 
said to be those whereon the priests knelt to 
make their devotions after saying Mass. Behind 
this chamber is a doorway leading to a newel 
staircase by which the roof can be reached. 
Opening out of the north side of the little chapel 
above described, is a doorway from which a few 
much worn steps lead up into a narrow com- 
partment separated from the chancel of the 
church by a perforated panel-work screen and 
provided also with an exceedingly small hagio- 
scope which commands the High Altar. This 
chamber is commonly called the Confessional, 
but whatever it was, it is pretty clear that it 
was not that. It may have been a private pew 
for members of the Warwick family to assist 
at the High Mass in the Parish Church, or 
perhaps more probably, it was a watching 
chamber from which not only the Mass could be 
1 08 



WARWICK 

seen, but the Altar watched at all times of the 
day and night by an unseen guardian. 

Leaving the church, the crypt should next 
be visited, which is reached by a doorway on the 
north side of the building. It occupies the space 
under the choir and possesses four pillars, of 
which three are Norman with cushion-capitals 
and the fourth a fourteenth-century addition in 
the decorated style. The ancient ducking-stool 
for scolds is kept here. 



109 



CHAPTER VI 

WARWICK {continued) 

the leycester hospital-the school-leaming- 
ton-guy's cliff 

I EAVING the church and passing up Old 
Square the Market-place is reached, where 
above the Market-house is the Museum contain- 
ing an interesting collection of fossils and birds 
with some antiquities. Brook Street leads into 
High Street, at the end of which is the West 
Gate and the Earl of Leicester's Hospital. 
There appear to have been two Guilds in 
Warwick, both founded in the reign of Rich- 
ard II., one of which was called that of the 
Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin, and the 
other that of St George the Martyr. These 
two seem to have early amalgamated, and then 
discharged the usual charitable and religious pur- 
poses of such organisations. Amongst other 
things they provided priests to sing Mass in 
the two chapels over the gates, they assisted in 
the payment of the secular canons who minis- 
tered in the Parish Church, they distributed 
alms weekly to eight poor people of the Guild, 
and assisted in keeping in repair the great bridge 
I II 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

over the Avon now in ruins. When the dis- 
solution of all such institutions took place, the 
Hall of the United Guilds, which appears to 
have been built in the reign of Henry VI. 
was, according to Dugdale, granted by Edward 
VI. to Sir Nicholas le Strange, from whose 
hands it passed into those of Robert Dudley. 
According to another account it was transferred 
to the Earl by the bailiff and burgesses of thej 
town, to whom it had been handed over by theT 
Guild. In any case, the Earl converted it into 
a hospital for twelve men and a master, such 
poor men to be as Dugdale puts it, "impotent 
persons, not having above 5 li. per an. of their 
own, and such as either had been or should be 
maimed in the warrs in the said Q's service, 
her heirs and successors, especially under the 
conduct of the said Earl or his heirs, or had 
been servants and tenants to him and his heirs, 
and born in the Counties of Warw. or Glouc. 
or having their dwelling there for five years 
before : and in case there happen to be none 
such hurt in the Warrs, then other poor of 
Kenilworth, Warwick, Stretford, super 
Avon in this County, or of Wooton under 
Edge or Erlingham in Gloucestersh. to be 
recommended by the Minister and Church- 
wardens where they last had their aboad ; 
which poor men are to have Liveries (yi%. 
Gowns of blew cloth, with Ragged Staff" 
embroydered on the left sleeve) and not to go 
into the Town without them." The patron- 
age is at present exercised by Lord de L'isle 
112 



WARWICK 

and Dudley as the descendant of Sir Henry 
Sidney of Penhurst, who was the husband of 
Mary, sister of Ambrose and Robert Dudley, 
both of whom, as has been shown, died without 
issue. The Hospital, which is a most excel- 
lent example of a half-timbered edifice, stands 
at some little height above the road at the 
side of a terrace which leads to the Chapel 
above the west gate, which is used for the 
services of the Brethren. The Hospital is 
entered by a gateway over which is the inscrip- 
tion, " Hospitivm ^Collegiatvm Roberti Dvdlei 
Comitis Leycestriae," with the date 1571, 
armorial bearings and badges. The interior 
of the quadrangle is a most picturesque scene, 
the carving and decoration being very effective. 
The gables are surmounted by figures of bears 
with staves, and on the opposite side to that 
of the entrance, where the Master's lodge lies, 
are large coloured carvings of the same animal 
and of the porcupine, the former being the 
badge of the Leicesters, the latter of the 
Sidneys. Beneath them is the inscription, 

"Honour all men; love the brotherhood; fear 
God; and honour the King." 

An outside staircase leads from the yard to an 
upper corridor running partly round the build- 
ing. At the head of these stairs was the Guild 
Chamber now divided up into dwelling-places for 
some of the brethren. On the right of the en- 
trance into the quadrangle is the kitchen, to which 
all the brethren have a common right, a cook 
H 113 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

being provided for them. It contains a fihe old 
oak cabinet which was brought from Kenil worth 
Castle, a Saxon chair, a portion of needle- work l|l 
said to have been executed by Amy Robsart, || ] 
and a part of Robert Dudley's will with his 
signature " R. Leycestere." On the opposite 
side of the quadrangle is the banquetting hall, 
but in such a condition as to make it difficult 
to judge what it must have looked like in its 
pristine glory, or even at the time when Sir 
Fulk Greville entertained James I. within its 
walls. The Minstrel Gallery has been com- 
pletely cut off from the hall, and converted 
into a drawing-room for the master, and the 
rest of the hall is largely occupied by a series 
of closets in which the brethren keep their 
cOal. Moreover, during the process of some 
previous renovation, the carved work which 
originally occupied the spandrels of the roof 
timbers, has, with the exception of two por- 
tions which remain to show us what the rest 
were like, disappeared. The roof timbers, 
by the way, which are of Spanish chestnut, are 
remarkably fine. 

The garden which lies at the back of the 
Hospital is equally divided up between the 
master and brethren. It contains a Norman 
arch which was found during repairs which 
were executed in the Chapel, also a large 
Egyptian vase of stone representing a lotus- 
flower, which originally occupied the summit 
of a nilometer. It was removed from War- 
wick Castle, which was its previous location, 
114 



WARWICK 

in order to make . room for the Warwick vase. 
It was given by the second Earl of Warwick 
to the Hospital, and its stand, as an inscription 
thereon narrates, was given by the then master. 

The Priory is a house built about the middle 
of the sixteenth century by Thomas Hawkins, 
the son of a fish-seller of Warwick, on the site 
of a religious house of the order of Canons 
Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, founded by 
Henry de Newburgh in the reign of Henry I., 
being the first house of that order founded in 
these islands. At a later date the possessions of 
this order were handed over to the Trinitarians, 
whose function it was to raise funds for the 
redemption of captives. At the time of the 
Dissolution this property was granted to Haw- 
kins, no doubt at the instigation of John Dudley, 
Duke of Northuniberland, whose servant he was. 
He succeeded in accumulating a great deal of 
wealth, which was rapidly got rid of in four 
years after his death by his son Edward, who 
ended his days in the Fleet prison, as the result 
of an unsuccessful attempt to cheat the Lord 
Keeper of the Great Seal by a false conveyance. 
It was in this house, part of which has been 
rebuilt, that Katherine Parr's brother died. The 
Priory is reached by going up Northgate Street 
past the County Hall. 

Warwick School is an exceedingly ancient 
foundation with records covering a period of at 
least 825 years. In the reign of Edward the 
Confessor it was in existence, and connected with 
the Collegiate Church of "St Mary and All 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Saints in the Castle." In 1470 (circa) we 
learn that the " churche of Seynt Johan the 
Baptyst, wyche stondythe yet in the market 
styd .... is nowe the conion scholehows for 
gramarians," and in 1545 the school received a 
further charter from Henry VIII. From 1545 
to 1 57 1, when Leycester took over the buildings, 
it was passed in the " Guild House," now known 
as the Leycester Hospital. The school was 
re-constituted in 1875 and removed to a site 
outside the town. 

Leamington, or to give it its full title, 
granted to it in 1838, by the Queen, in memory 
of a visit which she paid in that year, Royal 
Leamington Spa, is as modern in appearance as 
Warwick is ancient. It has had, however, a 
longer existence than would be judged from its 
appearance, for the name of the river Leam 
which it is situated upon is Celtic in origin and 
means the elm-tree stream, this being one of 
many Celtic river names met with in Warwick- 
shire. From this fact it is probable that there 
was some sort of Celtic settlement in its neigh- 
bourhood, of which, however, no traces exist. 
In Domesday Book it is mentioned as a manor 
held of the King, by Roger de Montgomery, 
Earl of Shrewsbury, the builder of the Castle 
in the town from which he took his title. At 
a later period it became the property of the 
Canons of Kenilworth, whence it received the 
name which it possessed until 1838, and by 
which it is often still called, Leamington Priors, 
a suffix rendered necessary by the fact that there 
116 



WARWICK 

is another place close at hand called Leamington 
Hastings. At the Dissolution, it of course fell 
into the hands of the Crown and was granted 
in 1563 to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. 
It may be said, however, to have been practically 
devoid of a history, or at least of one of any 
importance until 1784. In 1586 Camden had 
discovered a mineral spring, but it was not until 
Abbotts in the above-mentioned year lit upon a 
second spring, that the waters began to acquire 
notoriety. Since that date several other springs 
have been discovered, though some of these 
have been of little importance. The town, 
which is connected with Warwick by a tram- 
line, possesses pretty gardens. Assembly Rooms 
erected in 1821, by Elliston, the well-known 
actor, and numerous hotels. The Royal Hotel, 
formerly in Clemens Street, at which Mr 
Dombey and Mr Bagstock were stopping when 
they met Mrs Skewton and her daughter in the 
Holly Walk, and with which one of the episodes 
in Thackeray's tale of the " Fatal Boots " is 
connected, is unfortunately no more, having been 
pulled down to make room for a railway station. 
The Bedford Hotel occupied the site of the 
London and Midland Bank, near the Town 
Hall. It was celebrated as the scene of one of 
the many remarkable exploits of Jack Mytton, 
a scion of an ancient Shropshire family, whose 
doings are depicted in a series of pictures to be 
seen hanging up in the parlours of old-fashioned 
hunting inns and in many country houses. This 
particular escapade was a wager, which he was 
117 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

successful in winning, that he would ride his 
mare into the dining room, jump her over the 
table and the heads of those sitting at it, and 
then jump her out of the balcony into the street 
below. The Regent Hotel on the other side 
has been visited by many royal personages, 
including her present Majesty, when Princess 
Victoria. The Pump Rooms and Bath are 
close to the Victoria Bridge, and opposite to 
them are the Jephson Gardens, named after a 
physician whose success in the use of the waters 
brought many patients to the town. His statue 
will be seen in the gardens under a classic 
temple. The churches are all modern and un- 
interesting, the most striking being the Catholic 
church of St Peter in Dormer Place, which 
has a very fine High Altar, Tabernacle and 
Reredos. 

Guy's Cliff is a place easy of access from 
either Warwick or Leamington, which is con- 
nected with an old Warwickshire legend, that 
of Guy, Earl of Warwick and his wife Phyllis, 
certain portions of whose so-called armour is 
shown at Warwick Castle (see p. 91). Guy 
was not only the destroyer of a savage animal 
called the Dun Cow, which is supposed to 
have ravaged the Midlands at that period, 
but he is also the hero of the celebrated combat 
with the giant Colbrond. This warrior was the 
champion of the kings of Denmark and Norway, 
and the fate of this country was to be decided by 
the issue of his combat with the representative 
of King Athelstan. Guy, who had just returned 
118 



WARWICK 

from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, disguised 
as a palmer, agreed to take upon himself the 
responsibility. The contest took place near 
Winchester, and was terminated by the com- 
plete defeat of Colbrond, whose head was cut 
off by the English champion. The end of 
Guy's career, which is more particularly asso- 
ciated with our present locality, may be told in 
the words of Dugdale: "From whence the 
Earle bent his course towards Warwick, and 
coming thither not known of any, for three 
dayes together took Almes at the hands of his 
own Lady, as one of those xiii poor people unto 
which she dayly gave relief her self, for the 
safety of him and her, and the health of both 
their Souls. And having rendred thanks to 
her, he repaired to an Heremite that resided 
amongst the shady woods hard by, desiring by 
conference with him to receive some spiritual 
comfort, where he abode with that holy man till 
his death, and upon his departure out of this 
World, which hapned within a short time, suc- 
ceeded him in that Cell, and continued the same 
course of life for the space of two years after ; 
but then discerning death to approach, he sent to 
his Lady their Wedding Ring by a trusty ser- 
vant, wishing her to take care of his burial : 
adding also, that when she came, she should find 
him lying dead in the Chapel, before the Altar ; 
and moreover, that within xv dayes after she 
herself should depart this life. Whereupon she 
came accordingly, and brought with her the 
Bishop of the Dioces as also many of the Clergy 

119 . 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

& other people, and finding his body there did 
honourably interre it in that Heremitage, and 
was herself afterwards buried by him, leaving her 
paternal inheritance to Reynburn her only son. 
Which departure of our famous Guy hapned in 
the year of our Lord Dccccxxix, and of his 
own age the seventieth." It has been shown, 
however, that the story, like the names of the 
hero and heroine, is Norman-French, and dates 
back to the thirteenth century. " None of the 
earlier MSS., and few even of the early-printed 
books, have any reference to the Dun Cov/, the 
earliest mention of which is in 1570, when Dr 
Caius describes the relics of the animal which 
he saw at Guy's Cliff and at Coventry, and of 
which he gives full details ; and it is only in the 
seventeenth century that the story becomes com- 
plete, and this is a * tragedy' (j/^) published in 
t66i, and these references, with the fact that 
there was a Dun Cow inn at Dunchurch, men- 
tioned in George Fox's Journal in 1655, sum up 
the evidence for the legend." (Timmins. ) As 
far as regards the so-called ribs of the Dun Cow 
which Dr Caius saw and apparently credited, 
which have since been shown at Warwick Castle 
and at Coventry, these" are bones from whales. 
Guy's Cliff has, apart from this legend, many 
associations of interest. The hermitage is said 
to have been set up by St Dubritius, who, as 
has been already stated, is associated possibly 
correctly with the early history of Warwick, in 
the sixth century. In Saxon times, if the in- 
scription in the cave has been correctly deciphered 
120 



WARWICK 

and construed, it was the resort of a hermit. 
Richard Beauchamp rebuilt the chapel and resi- 
dences for the priests, and founded it as a chantry. 
One of the chantry priests was John Rous, 
whose fame as an early antiquary is well estab- 
lished. Britton states that he " descended from 
a family long resident at Brinklow, in this county. 
His father was Geoffrey Rous, of Warwick. 
After studying at Oxford, the future antiquary 
became a chantry priest at Guy^s Cliff, on the 
foundation of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War- 
wick. In this most eligible retirement he com- 
posed several works, the chief of which related 
to the antiquities of his native county. He had 
the opportunity of consulting many manuscripts 
preserved in monastic establishments ; but he 
copied from these with too implicit and liberal 
a hand, and appears to have been studious to 
aggrandize the subject on which he wrote by a 
multiplication of pompous early legends, rather 
than to illustrate it by comparison and investiga- 
tion. He died at Guy's Cliff in 1491, and was 
buried in St Mary's Church, Warwick. His 
writings he bequeathed to that collegiate church, 
having caused to be erected for their reception a 
library over the south porch. But they were 
dispersed before the time of Sir William Dug- 
dale ; and the only works by Rous, to which 
that indefatigable antiquary could gain access, 
were: "A Roll of the Earls of Warwick," 
wherein, besides a brief history relating to each 
of them, their pictures and arms are with much 
curiosity depicted, and a " Chronicle of the 
121 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Kings of England," reaching down to his own 
time. 

At the dissolution, the property was granted 
to Sir Andrew Flammock, and subsequently the 
chapel was handed over to John Colbourne, the 
husband of his only daughter. The present 
house, which was mostly built in 1822, is of no 
architectural interest, but contains some good 
pictures. 

The Chapel of St Mary Magdalene dates 
from the reign of Henry VI., but has been 
considerably restored. It contains a fear- 
fully mutilated figure of Guy, eight feet in 
height, which has been carved out of the rock. 
Dugdale, who gives a picture of this figure as 
It was or is supposed to have been, says that it 
was erected by the Earl who was the builder of 
the church. The character of the armour, how- 
ever, seems to show that it was of a date anterior 
to that of the chapel, so far as that at present re- 
mains to us. The cells of the priests are beneath 
the chapel. Guy's Cave is an excavation in rock, 
in which in the early part of this century the 
well-known antiquary, Daniel Lysons, discovered 
an inscription which has been recently deciphered. 
' " It is rudely carved in the rock in Saxon runic 
characters of the tenth century, with a later gloss 
in Roman characters, probably of the earlier part 
of the twelfth century, and is in the Mercian 
dialect to the following effect : * Yd Crist-tu 
icniecti this i-wihtth, Guhthi,' which is thus 
translated : * Cast out, thou Christ, from thy ser- 
vant this burden, Guhthi.' Guhthi appears to 
122 



WARWICK 

have been the hermit that lived here." (Ribton- 
Turner.) 

The river here is exceedingly beautiful, and 
the whole place merits the praises which it re- 
ceived from Dugdale and Leland, in words which 
are as true now as they were when they were 
written. " A place this is of so great delight, 
in respect of the River gliding below the Rock, 
the dry and wholesome situation, and the fair 
Grove of lofty Elms overshadowing it, that to 
one, who desireth a retired life, either for his 
devotions or study the like is hardly to be found, 
as Leland in his MS. Itinerary made temp, H. 8 
doth well observe. It is a House (saith he) of 
pleasure, a place meet for the Muses : There is 
silence, a pretty wood, Antra in vivo saxo, the 
River rouling over the stones with a pretty 
noyse, nemusculum ibidem opacum, fontes liquidae 
et gemmei ; prat a Jlorida, antra muscosa rivi 
levis et per saxa discursus ; necnon soUtudo et 
quies Musis amicissima,'' 

By the side of the river and on its opposite 
bank from the house is the Mill familiar to 
us from the pictures of it which decorate so 
many railway carriages at the present moment. 
There was a mill at this spot in Saxon times 
of which nothing remains. The situation of the 
mill is most charming, and the whole place is one 
which should not be missed by visitors to Leam- 
ington or Warwick. 

Less than a mile off is Blacklow Hill, an 
eminence of small altitude, covered with trees, 
in the midst of which is a monument surmounted 
123 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

by a cross, erected in 1821 by Mr Greathead of 
Guy's Cliff House, in commemoration of the 
execution near that spot of Piers Gaveston 
(see p. 85). The inscription was composed 
by Dr Parr, and runs thus : 

" In the hollow of this rock was beheaded, on 
the first day of July, 1312, by barons as 
lawless as himself. Piers Gaveston, Earl 
of Cornwall, the minion of a hateful king, 
in life and death a memorable instance of 
misrule." 

Mr Ribton-Turner has shown that the date on 
the monument is incorrect. " Gaveston," he 
says, " was executed on the day of St Gervasius 
and St Protasius, which falls on the 19th of 
June. The difference between the old style and 
the new style in i 3 1 2 was eight days only, and 
therefore the date, according to the new style, 
would be June 27th, but the inscription erron- 
eously makes the variation amount to twelve 
days, which is the difference between the old and 
the new style at the time the monument was 
erected." 



♦ 



124 




e<ru£(vonrl 






CHAPTER VII 
KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

THE CASTLE-CHURCH-PRIORY REMAINS 

T^HERE is no place In the Midlands probably 
which possesses more of historical interest 
than Kenilworth Castle, for though the doings 
and customs of an important mediaeval munici- 
pality, such as Coventry, its struggles with those 
who saw in it chiefly a milch cow for their 
necessities, its hospitalities to royal visitants, its 
method of solution of the daily problems of life 
which it was called upon to solve, are of the 
most intense interest to the student, yet it must 
be confessed that the pomp and circumstance 
of the great medieval castle, its tales of warfare 
and of chivalry, the stories true and false which 
become connected with it, bulk much larger in the 
popular mind. Added to the ordinary interest 
which any great castle must possess and which 
Kenilworth has to an extent to which few others 
attain, it has this added attraction, that it has 
been chosen as the scene of one of Scott's novels, 
in which the author though, more suo, dealing 
with history as if it were clay to be shaped for 
his purpose, has cast a" glamour round those 
125 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

ruined walls which affects the minds of most 
of those visiting them far more than the real 
events of which it was the stage. The history 
of the Castle, which may be considered before 
that of the town is dealt with, has been clearly 
and sufficiently stated by Mr Clark, in his 
masterly work on "Mediaeval Military Archi- 
tecture," from which are drawn most of the 
facts which are now to be brought before the 
reader. There is no difficulty in gathering from 
the name of Kenilworth, that it was at one time 
the worth or habitation of one Kenelm, but 
whether this was the Mercian monarch of that 
name or some other person is a question which 
cannot be settled. In any case he was obviously 
a man of some importance, because his buhr 
and its appurtenances were extensive and strong. 
We learn from Domesday Book that the manor 
of Kenilworth was a member of the royal manor 
of Stoneleigh, and that its tenant did suit and 
service upon the mote known as Motstow Hill, 
of which more will be said on a later page. At 
the period mentioned Kenilworth was "in two 
parts, Opton or Upton, containing three hides, 
held direct of the king by Albertus Clericus, in 
pure alms ; and Chineworde, held by Ricardus 
Forestarius. Opton is upper-town or high- 
town, the rising ground to the north of the 
present church ; Chineworth is Kenilworth pro- 
per." Mr Clark also adds that " Chineworth 
may be an accidental coincidence, or it may be a 
corruption of Kenilworth." Whoever was the 
owner of the manor during Saxon times we may 
126 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

regard it as certain that he fortified this position 
by the usual earthworks and by erecting an 
earthen keep or buhr, as was done by so many 
other Saxon thanes and lords. Where exactly 
the mound is now, which he erected and which 
later generations believed to be haunted by fairies, 
and which of the earthworks date back to this 
early period it is now difficult, if not impossible, 
to say, since succeeding owners have so com- 
pletely altered the appearance of the place as 
to make them unrecognizable with any certainty. 
So far all or most of the history of Kenilworth 
is surmise, but in the reign of Henry I. it 
emerges into the light of history, passing by grant 
of that monarch, some time before 1122, into 
the possession of Geoffrey de Clinton, who was 
one of his chamberlains and his treasurer, and 
possibly the same person who was afterwards 
Chief Justice of England. It was he who built 
the priory of Kenilworth, and, according to 
Dugdale, he also erected the Castle, though 
Mr Clark doubts whether any of the masonry 
now standing dates from his period. 

In the reign of Henry II. the Castle was 
leased to the Crown by Geoffrey the second, 
son of the first holder and husband to Agnes, 
daughter of Roger de Beaumont, Earl of 
Warwick. The fortress appears to have been 
strengthened by the king, who also garrisoned 
and fortified it. Numerous entries appear con- 
cerning the prices and quantities of stores in the 
Pipe Roll, from which we learn that one hundred 
quarters of corn for bread cost ^S, 2s. 2d., or 
127 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

about 2d. a bushel, one hundred hogs is. 6d. 
each, forty salted cows, 2s. each, and one 
hundred and twenty cheeses ;^2, or 4d. each. 
King John took a further lease from Henry, the 
grandson of the original owner, spent large sums 
of money upon the place and often visited it. 
Mr Clark thinks that he may well have built 
Lunn's Tower and that it is possible that he may 
even have erected the Keep, though he thinks 
that on the whole it is more safe to attribute 
it to the second Geoffrey. Henry 11. was fre- 
quently at the Castle, and was responsible for the 
construction of a chapel there, which was to be 
ceiled with wainscot and painted, and to have 
seats provided in it for the king and queen. 
The Castle must at this time have been used as 
a prison, as it was in the' reign of King John, 
for mention is made of a gaol delivery by the 
judges. During this reign many additions were 
made to the strength of the Castle both in the 
way of earthworks and of buildings, for Mr 
Clark says, "No doubt the Water Tower and 
the early part of, and perhaps the additions to 
Mortimer's Tower were of this period, as well 
as the dam and the outworks beyond it. Henry 
seems to have completed the military works 
pretty much as they are now seen." It was 
during this reign that one of the most in- 
teresting events in the history of the Castle 
took place, its siege after the battle of Eves- 
ham. Simon de Montfort, who was married to 
Alianor or Eleanor, the sister of the king and 
widow of William Marshall, had been granted 
128 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

the Castle in 1253 or 1254 for his life and that 
of his wife, the King thus placing in the hands 
of the man who was to be his deadly enemy a 
fortress which, for strength and importance of 
position, was perhaps unequalled, an act of 
generosity which he was soon to regret. After 
the death of Simon at the battle of Evesham, 
all those fugitives who could make their way 
there, fled to Kenilworth, which became a 
centre of disaffection, garrisoned by some of the 
greatest nobles and most valiant soldiers in the 
land. 

After careful preparations Henry commenced 
the siege in the summer of 1266, pitching his 
headquarters "probably along the high ground 
between what is called Camp Field and Clinton 
Green, on the north side of the Castle." The 
siege was actively carried on and the defence, 
as will be seen from the quotation from the 
chronicle of Robert of Gloucester shortly to be 
given, was equally active. The King's camp 
was visited by Ottoboni, the Papal legate, after- 
wards Pope Adrian the Fifth, who had pre- 
viously been at Kenilworth as a visitor to the 
Castle, under its temporary governorship by 
Archbishop Walter de Gray. The two Princes, 
Edward and Richard, with the legate, en- 
deavoured to induce the besieged to come to 
terms, and give up the Castle; and with this 
object a royal council was summoned, which 
met at Coventry, and drew up the Ban or 
Dictum de Kenilworth, which was confirmed, 
and on the Sunday after its confirmation read 
I 129 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



out from the pulpit of Warwick church, by the 
legate, in presence of the King. This ban was 
an ordinance " declaring the plenary power of the 
king, annulling the acts of de Montfort, pro- 
viding that the liberties of the Church and the 
charters should be maintained ; that all persons, 
with the exception of the de Monforts and a 
few others, might compound for their offences 
with a fine ; and that all who submitted within 
forty days should be pardoned. At the same 
time all persons were forbidden to circulate vain 
and foolish stories of miracles regarding Simon 
de Montfort, or to repute him as a saint and a 
martyr'' (^Dict. of Eng, Hist.). These terms 
were refused by the besieged, and the King made 
up his mind that the place must be carried by 
storm. Robert of Gloucester gives a rough but 
impressive picture of some of the events which 
have just been sketched, an account which may 
now be quoted : — 

" The king anon at mid-summer with strength and 
with gin 1 
To Kenilworth went, the castle to win, 
He swore he would not thence till he were within. 
So long they sped badly that they might as well bliue'^ 
None of their gates those within ever close would. 
Open they stood night and day, come in whoso 

would. 
Out they smite well oft, when men too nigh came, 
And slew fast on either half and prisoner's name ^ 
And then bought them back with ransom. Such 
life long did last : 

With mangonels and engines each upon the other cast. 
The legate and the archbishop with them also nome ^ 

^ Engines. ^ Close. ^ Took. ^ They took. 

130 






KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

Two other bishops, and to Kenilworth come, 
To make accord between the king and the dis- 
inherited also 
And them of the castle, if it might be ido.^ 
But the disinherited would not do all after the king.2 
Nor they of the castle any the more, nor stand to 
their liking^. 

The legate with his red cope amansed ^ tho^^ 

Them that in the castle were, and full many mo,^ 

All that helped them or were of their rede'' 

Or to them consented, in will or in deed. 

They of the castle held it in great despite. 

Copes and other cloathes they let make them ot 

white. 
And Master Philip Porpoise, that was a quaint man. 
Clerk, and hardy in his deeds, and their chirurgian,^ 
They made a mock legate in this cope of white 
Against the others' rede to do the legate a despite, 
And he stood as a legate upon the castle wall, 
And amansed king and legate and their men all. 
Such game lasted long among them in such strife. 
But much good was it not to soul nor to life," 

Eventually the garrison were forced to yield, 
chiefly on account of a pestilent sickness which 
broke out and with which, one must suppose. 
Master Philip Porpoise was unable to cope. 
The siege lasted six months, and its termination 
must have been welcome not only to the King, 
on account of the anxiety and the expense, 
which was enormous, but also to the monks oiF 
Kenilworth and Stoneleigh, and the people of 
the neighbourhood generally, who had been 
harried and robbed by both sides indiscrimin- 
ately. 

1 Done. 2 Agree to the king's wishes. 

'^ Decision. ^ Excommunicated. ^ Then 
6 More. '' Counsel. « Surgeon. 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



Immediately after the siege, the King made 
over the Castle to his brother Edmund, Earl of 
Lancaster, from whom it passed to his son 
Thomas, and on his death and attainder it re- 
verted to the Crown. Thomas' brother and 
heir, Henry, brought Edward II., as a prisoner, 
here, until the time when he was taken upon 
his last journey to Berkeley. After Edward's 
death. Earl Henry, and after him his son 
of the same name, held the Castle, and 
on the decease of the latter, it fell to John of 
Gaunt, through his marriage with the second 
Henry's daughter and co-heir Blanch. During 
his time much was done in adding to the strength 
and convenience of the Castle, the inner ward 
having been remodelled, and the fine range of 
kitchens, hall, and state buildings, whose remains 
are still visible, having been constructed. The 
Castle reverted to the Crown on John of Gaunt's 
son becoming Henry IV., and during the reigns 
of the Seventh and Eighth Henries it received 
certain additions, none of which now remain. 
In 1563 Elizabeth granted it to Robert Dudley, 
who was in the next year created Earl of 
Leicester. His alterations were considerable. 
"He gutted the keep and forebuilding, fitting 
them up in the Tudor style ; built the pile of 
masonry, now nodding to its fall, and which 
bears his name, at the south-east corner of the 
inner ward ; he built or restored the Gallery 
Tower upon the outer end of the dam ; probably 
added an upper storey to the great barn ; and 
built the great gatehouse, a very fine specimen of 
132 






KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

its age. Probably also, late in his life, he filled 
up the ditch of the inner ward. His masonry, 
though of ashlar, and not ill executed, was not 
substantial, and upon the removal of the floors 
and roofs, the walls became unsafe, and much 
has fallen and is about to fall. No doubt his 
works were executed with great rapidity, since 
his famous reception of Elizabeth here took place 
in 1575." (Clark.) 

Some mention of these revels must now be 
made, since from the prominent place which they 
occupy in Scott's novel, they are the first thing 
which most of us think about when the name of 
the Castle is mentioned. But before entering 
upon them it may be as well to clear up the 
question of Amy Robsart and her connection 
with Kenilworth, since, as will be remembered, 
Scott makes her visit it during the Queen's stay 
and have an interview with the Monarch. As a 
matter of fact. Amy Robsart was the only legiti- 
mate child of Sir John Robsart of Siderstern, in 
Norfolk, and was married publicly to Dudley in 
1550, in the presence of Edward VI. and many 
others. In 1560 she died or was murdered at 
Cumnor Place, where she was living at the time. 
It is impossible to enter into the question of her 
husband's guilty knowledge of her murder, if 
murder it was, and those wishing to read a 
succinct account of the facts of the case may be 
referred to the introduction to the novel, written 
for the " Border Edition," by Mr Andrew Lang. 
It is quite clear that though Amy Robsart may 
have seen Kenilworth, indeed, there is a tradition 

133 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

that she once rested there on a journey ; she cai 
never have visited it as its rightful mistress,] 
since it did not come into her husband's posses-l 
sion until three years after her death. The^ 
revels were very fully chronicled by Laneham, 
one of the attendants on the Queen, a figure, 
it will be remembered, in Scott's novel, who 
states that she "was met in the park, about a 
slight shoot from the Brayz and first gate of the 
Castle," by a person representing "one of the ten 
sibills, cumly clad in a pall of white sylk, who 
pronounced a proper poezie in English rime and 
meeter." This " her Majestie benignly accepted, 
and passed foorth unto the next gate of the 
Brayz, which, for the length, largenes, and use, 
they call now the Tylt-Yard ; whear a porter, 
tall of person, and wrapt also in sylke, with a 
club and keiz of quantitee according, had a rough 
speech full of passions, in meeter aptly made to 
the purpose." This done, six trumpeters, " clad 
in long garments of sylk, who stood uppon the 
wall of the gate, sounded a tune of welcum," 
while " her Highness, all along this Tylt-Yard, 
rode unto the inner gate, where a person repre- 
senting the Lady of the Lake (famous in King 
Arthurz Book) with two Nymphes waiting 
uppon her, arrayed all in sylks, attended her 
highness comming." From the midst of the pool, 
where there was a floating island, " bright blaz- 
ing with torches," the Lady of the Lake came to 
land and saluted the Queen with " a well-penned 
meeter," narrating the " auncientee of the castl," 
and the dignity of the Earls of Leicester. Over 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

the dry valley leading to the Castle gates there 
was a bridge erected, some of the posts of which 
bore bowls and trays containing fruits, fish, game, 
and other armorial bearings and musical instru- 
ments. Over the Castle gate, on a " Table beauti- 
fully garnished abovve with her Highnes Arms," 
was inscribed a Latin poem, descriptive of the 
various tributes paid to her arrival by the Gods 
and Goddesses. This was read to her by a poet 
** in a long ceruleous Garment, with a Bay Gar- 
land on his head, and a skrol in his hand. So 
passing intoo the inner coourt, her Majesty [that 
never rides but alone) thear set doun from her 
palfrey, was conveied up to chamber, when after 
did folio a great peal of Gunz and lightning by 
Fyr work." The festivities, says Britton, from 
whose pages the above has been condensed, lasted 
seventeen days, and comprised nearly every 
pastime which the resources of the age could 
produce. The hart was hunted in the park ; the 
dance was proclaimed in the gallery ; and the 
tables were loaded from morn to night with 
sumptuous cheer. As a proof of the hospitable 
spirit of the Earl, Laneham observes, that " the 
Clok Bell sang not a Note all the while her 
Highness waz thear : the Clok also stood still 
withall ; the handz of both the tablz stood firm and 
fast, allweys pointing at two a Clok," which was 
the banqueting hour. The park was peopled with 
mimic gods and goddesses, to surprise the regal 
visitant with complimentary dialogues and poetical 
representations. More simple amusements were 
also studiously introduced ; the men of Coventry 

135 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

performed their Hocktide play, a dramatic per- 
formance founded on the Massacre of the Danes 
in IOI2. The rural neighbours were assembled 
to run at the Quintin ; and a marriage was cele- 
brated, with all the country ceremonials, under 
the observation of the Queen. A famous 
Italian tumbler displayed feats of agility ; Morris- 
dancers went through their time-honoured per- 
formance, and thirteen bears were baited for the 
amusement of the courtiers. During the Queen's 
stay five gentlemen were knighted and "nyne 
persons were cured of the peynful and daunger- 
ous deseaz called the King's Evill." Such in 
brief were the festivities which were said to have 
cost the Earl ^looo per diem whilst they lasted. 
The Earl having lost the " noble impe," died 
without acknowledged legitimate issue, and be- 
queathed the Castle in the first place to his 
brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and on his 
death to Sir Robert Dudley, his son, of whose 
legitimacy there was more than a question (see 
p. 1 53). In the next reign James I. was anxious 
to secure the Castle for his own, and as a matter 
of fact Prince Henry was willing to pay jf 14,500 
to Sir Robert for the estate, and even went so 
far as to forward ;^3000 to its owner, then a 
fugitive from the kingdom, though it appears that 
none of this money ever came to its rightful 
owner. On the death of the Prince it became 
the property of his brother Charles, who obtained 
a private Act of Parliament to purchase it from 
Sir Robert's wife. Cromwell, after Charles' 
execution, granted the Castle to some of his 
136 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

officers who demolished the fabric in order to 
make money by the sale of the materials. After 
the restoration the Castle and manor were granted 
to the Hyde family, from whom it has descended 
to the Earl of Clarendon its present possessor. 

As the visitor approaches the Castle from the 
railway station, he will see, after crossing the 
brook by a foot-bridge, two of the towers with 
an intervening portion of wall. The tower on 
the left is the water tower, that on the right is 
Lunn's, and the wall between is that against 
which the stables are erected. The Castle is 
entered by a small gateway a short distance 
beyond the fine gatehouse which was erected by 
Leicester, and which, as Scott says, " is equal 
in extent, and superior in architecture, to the 
baronial castle of many a northern chief." It is 
the only part of the Castle which is now occupied 
as a dwelling-place, the entrance passage having 
been converted into two rooms, and a lateral porch, 
Italian in character, added on. In one of the 
rooms of the gatehouse is a fine fire-place which 
is said to have been brought from the Castle. 

After passing through the small garden 
attached to the caretaker's house, the outer 
court is entered. On the right will be seen 
the stately remains of the buildings which made 
up the inner court, before visiting which it will 
be well to make as far as possible the circuit 
of the curtain wall of the outer court v/ith its 
various towers. Keeping, therefore, along the 
left, the stables will be seen through the trees of 
a small shrubbery ; and on their left and close to 

137 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

the gatehouse, Lunn's Tower. It Is a cylindri- 
cal tower, 40 feet in height, which projects 
considerably from the curtain. It possesses two 
upper floors with fire-places, one of these being 
called by the fanciful name of the King's 
Chamber. The stabling is built of stone below, 
and for the most part of timber and brick above. 
It has at its centre a large porch with diagonal 
buttresses and a wide entrance under a round- 
headed arch, as if for a barn. Much of this is 
in the late perpendicular style, though tradition 
assigns an earlier date to it. The visitor will 
keep along the railings until he reaches Morti- 
mer's Tower, which must be carefully examined. 
It is doubtful to whom the tower owes its name, 
as some, including Scott, have believed that it 
was named after the Earl of March, whilst 
others state that it was derived from the im- 
prisonment there of a Sir John Mortimer by 
Henry V. This tower is more properly a 
double gateway opening out upon the tilt-yard, 
and provided with two portcullisses and two sets 
of gates. There are the remains of a chamber 
on each side, that on the left hand, passing out, 
having a garderobe. The upper floor has been 
entirely removed. The outer entrance is guarded 
by two half-round towers with slits for repelling 
an attack. This tower-gateway leads out upon a 
high bank, originally a part of the dam of the 
Great Lake, shortly to be described, which bank 
was used as a til ting-yard and extended for 80 
yards to a second building called the Gallery 
Tower. This cannot now be reached from the 
138 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

tilt-yard, because the dam has been intersected 
by a deep cutting through which the waters of 
the lake were drained off, but it can be seen 
through the trees from that end of the dam 
which is still accessible to the visitor. It owes 
its name apparently to "the broad and fair 
gallery, destined for the ladies who were to wit- 
ness the feats of chivalry presented on the area " 
with which it was provided. It was through 
this gate that Queen Elizabeth entered the 
Castle, a bridge having been erected across the 
portion of the lake in front of it, and here it was 
that she received the address of the porter dis- 
guised as a giant. Beyond the Gallery Tower, 
and not visible from the present position, there 
is a ditch on the other side of which is a great 
outwork of earth which is called the Brayz, 
possibly Mr Clark thinks from " Brayda," a 
suburban field or broad place. This outwork is 
in the shape of a half moon, covers a space of 
about eight acres, and has along its front a bank 
provided with four mounds. Returning from 
Mortimer's Tower and before crossing the rustic 
bridge which leads to the outer courtyard, the 
visitor should turn back to inspect the Water 
Tower and buildings near it the path to which 
cannot be mistaken. As he passes to the tower 
in question, he will see on the left hand the 
foundations of the chapel built for the Castle by 
John of Gaunt. The tower " rises as half an 
octagon, the angles being taken off by two 
diagonal buttresses, between which, in a projec- 
tion, is a loop which lights a garderobe." In 

139 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

the ground floor, which seems to have been a 
kitchen, there is a fine fire-place. A well-stair 
with a spire over its head leads to the upper 
room, and also to the battlements of the tower 
and curtain, whence there is a good view of 
Lunn's Tower beyond the long roof of the 
stabling. The upper room just mentioned had a 
wooden floor and a fire-place, was lit by two- 
light trefoil-headed windows, recessed and pro- 
vided with side-seats of stone, and had a small 
room appended to the west which was lit by a 
loop. This upper room with its appendage is 
sometimes called the Queen's Chamber, but the 
name is apparently quite a fanciful one. Leaving 
the Water Tower and passing along the wall, a 
warder's room will next be encountered. This 
room, which contains a fireplace and a large 
stone aumbry, with broken shelf, as well as a 
garderobe, is largely built in the thickness of the 
wall, but also projects to a slight extent on its 
outer face. Returning to Mortimer's Tower it 
will be well to pause for a moment upon the 
rustic bridge, and consider the position of the 
Great Lake on which the floating island and 
many other diversions were exhibited for the 
delectation of Queen Elizabeth, but which has 
now completely disappeared. One end of this 
lake, which was an artificial sheet of water, was 
formed by the great dam, already mentioned, on a 
portion of which the visitor stands when he has 
passed through the outer gateway of Mortimer's 
Tower. From thence it extended round the 
Castle for a distance of about half a mile, its 
140 



KENILWORTH—STONELEIGH 

position being quite clearly traceable by the 
depression in the ground, from the bridge and 
from other parts of the Castle. It was about 
TOO yards in width, and lo or 12 feet in depth, 
and was well stocked with fish. A second and 
smaller lake which lay on the other side of the 
dam and extended beyond the Water Tower 
was drained and converted by Dudley into an 
orchard. 

Immediately beyond the bridge, keeping along 
the outer wall to the left, a postern-gate will be 
seen, with steps leading down to the lake, and 
still further, three loops of the Norman period, 
deeply splayed, which evidently belonged to some 
early building which has completely disappeared. 
The visitor now passes between Leicester's build- 
ings and the outer wall. On the right and be- 
yond Leicester's buildings are the Privy Chamber, 
the Presence Chamber, with a boldly projecting 
garderobe tower and Whitehall. On the left 
hand, along this part of the wall as far as the 
partition separating off the Pleasaunce, will be 
seen a number of fireplaces which mark the 
position of the '* domi " or places of abode of 
the men-at-arms, the corbels for sustaining their 
roof-timbers being also noticeable. 

In this wall are also a shoulder-headed window 
and a late decorated postern which corresponds 
to the postern leading from the chamber under 
the Great Hall. A partition wall with large 
perpendicular archway piercing it, cuts off King 
Henry VIII. 's Plaisance from the rest of the 
outer ward. From this point, the outer wall 
J41 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

runs to the Swan Tower, being pierced at one 
point by a perpendicular archway, called the 
King's Gate ; and possibly, Mr Clark thinks, 
intended to permit of the launching of a boat. 
The Swan Tower, which will be well seen at a 
later point from the summit of the Strong Tower, 
is at the north-western angle of the Castle wall, 
and is said to have been remodelled by Dudley. 
From thence the wall ran to Leicester's Gate- 
way, and was provided in this distance with two 
towers, but they and the wall itself have been 
destroyed. The visitor will now turn to the in- 
spection of the central buildings, and from the 
point which he has reached can enter them by 
the postern under the great hall, the postern, 
by the way, through which Wayland Smith 
was ejected by Michael Lambourne with such 
fatal effect to the unhappy Amy in the story. 
The path to this postern cuts through the great 
bank on which the hall is situated, which was 
the inner boundary of the moat of the older 
Castle, for the hollow space within the present 
curtain wall, was the ancient moat. This great 
mound may be that which formed the buhr of 
the original Saxon owner, but this is doubtful, as 
there is some reason to suppose that it may be 
the point occupied by the keep which has the 
rightful claim to this distinction. The " post- 
ern " is a square-headed doorway, with a bold 
portcullis groove ; and immediately above it is a 
small square window traversed by the grate ; and 
in the sill of the hall window above is a round 
hole for the chain, by which the grate was lifted. 
142 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

This portcullis is rather a tribute to the military 
character of the building, than for the affording 
any special security, for the large windows of the 
hall above " would have admitted an army/' 
Passing through the hall for the present and 
entering the inner court of the Castle, it will 
be well to commence the inspection of its build- 
ings by visiting the keep, or, as it is sometimes 
called, " Caesar's Tower." This is entered by 
a circular headed doorway which leads into 
the Annexe, a building of the Norman period, 
but frequently altered at later times, which is 
erected against the west wall of the keep. At 
the opposite side to the entrance from the inner 
court is a doorway which led down to a terrace 
above the pleasure gardens of the Castle, those 
gardens in which was the grotto wherein Eliza- 
beth met Amy Robsart and where Leicester and 
Tresillian engaged for the first time in combat. 
Immediately opposite to this garden, on the 
opposite side of it, that is to say, from the door- 
way where we are now standing, is the spot called 
Clinton Green, which is the probable site of the 
head-quarters of King Henry III., during the 
siege of the Castle. Leaving the Annexe the 
keep is next entered, which is " a fine example of 
a first class late Norman keep of the rectangular 
type." It is provided with four towers, of 
which the north-east (/.^. that on the left of 
the spectator and on the opposite side to that 
of the point of entry above described) con- 
tains the remains of a spiral staircase by which 
the upper rooms and the battlements were 

H3 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

reached. The south-east tower was the one 
which carried the two clock-faces, whose hands 
stood always at two o'clock during the progress 
of the revels, the places for the dials of which 
can be distinctly seen from the exterior; close 
by this tower, and in the west wall, is the 
well, which is 4 feet in diameter, and now quite 
choked up. Near to it is one of the original 
windows, which gives us an idea of the kind of' 
illumination which such a room must have had 
at the period. It is very deeply splayed, both 
externally and internally ; and could, therefore, 
have been of comparatively little use for the 
firing of arrows, so that its primary object really 
was to light and ventilate the room. In the 
south wall are three great windows, which 
replace loops of the same character as that just 
described. These loops were " replaced by 
large heavily-mullioned windows of the Tudor 
period, which windows have again been re- 
moved.'' The opposite wall has been completely 
removed. Close beside the doorway through 
which entrance was gained to the interior of the 
keep, is a much smaller doorway, leading into a 
garderobe tower. The basement of this must 
have been simply a huge cess-pit, receiving the 
contents of the garderobes on the other floors 
and on the battlements, and leads one to wonder, 
as one so often does in ancient castles, how our 
lusty ancestors managed to live under insanitary 
conditions which would rapidly dispose of their 
more sensitive^descendants. Leaving the Annexe 
and turning to the right, the site of the kitchens 
144 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

Is reached, this being the first of those structures 
called Lancaster's buildings. Almost the entire 
of this has disappeared, but two fire-places re- 
main, connected with one of which are two fine 
ovens. The other fire-place, which is set against 
the curtain wall, has its back lined with tiles, 
arranged herring-bone-wise, whilst in the larger 
and several other fire-places in the Castle, the 
tiles, or thin bricks, are set parallel. Beyond 
the kitchen is the site of the Buttery, and beyond 
this we come to the Strong Tower, called by 
Scott Mervyn's Tower, from a probably base- 
less story that one Arthur ap Mervyn, a Welsh 
chief, was murdered in it by Lord Mortimer of 
Wigmore, one of the Marchers of Wales. The 
basement of this tower, like the other rooms in 
it, has a vaulted roof. In the room above this, 
on the splay of the window, will be seen several 
ancient coats-of-arms cut in the stone, possibly 
by prisoners, anxious to wile away their time. 
The uppermost room is that which Scott assigns 
as the habitation of Tresillian, in which Amy 
took refuge. A gallery by this room leads to a 
staircase, which ascends to the roof, whence 
there is an excellent view of the Swan Tower, 
the Plaisance, and other parts of the Castle, and 
descends to a garde-robe on the one hand, and 
to the corner of the Great Hall on the other. 
The Great Hall is, " for dimensions, proportion, 
material, and workmanship, probably the finest 
hall in the kingdom." It is wholly of early 
Perpendicular architecture, 90 feet long by 45 
feet wide, and " stood upon a basement of the 
K 145 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

same size, of which the roof was vaulted in 
eighteen square bays, springing from ten piers, 
arranged with the walls in three equal aisles." 
The north end was partitioned off by a stone 
screen from the rest of the cellar, a passage 
being thus formed from the door leading to the 
inner court to the postern-gate, \y;hich has been 
already described. The upper part of the build- 
ing, or hall proper, was lit by large windows, 
deeply recessed, and provided with stone seats 
on either side. Of these windows, each of 
which possessed two lights, there are four on the 
west side and three on the east. In each of 
these walls there is also a huge fire-place. The 
north wall is gone, and so is that of the south, 
which stood behind the dais, but one window of 
the music gallery remains. The roof was an 
open timber one, and the recesses for the five 
hammer -beams on each side, which supported it, 
are still to be seen. At the south end of the 
hall, that is at the opposite end to the Strong 
Tower, there is at either side a projection. That 
on the left, called the Oriel, is " a large half- 
octagon, opening by an arch of 1 5 feet from the 
dais, panelled and groined, and containing three 
large windows of two lights, with transoms and 
foliated heads, and a small fire-place." On the 
opposite side is a square projection, with two 
octagonal turrets, matching the Strong Tower at 
the other end of the hall, and called Saintlowe's 
Tower. It is in this tower that Scott places 
the lodging of Lord Hunsdon, in which Amy 
was visited by Leicester and Varney. As a 

.46 



KENILWORTH—STONELEIGH 

matter of fact, it served partly as a recess for the 
reception of a buffet or sideboard, and partly as 
a passage leading to the withdrawing rooms at 
the back of the dais. This splendid hall must 
have presented a truly magnificent sight before it 
was dismantled, and at no period probably did it 
shine with such splendour as at the time of 
Elizabeth's visit. Scott, who closely follows 
Laneham's account of the revels, says that it 
was "gorgeously hung for her reception with 
the richest silken tapestry, misty with perfumes, 
and sounding to strains of soft and delicious 
music. From the highly carved oaken roof 
hung a superb chandelier of gilt bronze, formed 
like a spread eagle, whose outstretched wings 
supported three male and three female figures, 
grasping a pair of branches in each hand. The 
hall was thus illuminated by twenty-four torches 
of wax. At the upper end of the splendid apart- 
ment was a state canopy, overshadowing a royal 
throne, and beside it was a door, which opened 
to a long suite of apartments, decorated with 
the utmost magnificence ^for the Queen and her 
ladies, whenever it should be her pleasure to 
be private." After leaving the hall, the visitor 
should observe the porch and fine doorway 
which led into it from the courtyard by means 
of a flight of steps which have now disappeared. 
By the side of the porch leading into the hall 
is a recess for an attendant, and the porch itself 
is richly panelled, vaulted and groined, whilst the 
hollows of the mouldings of the doorway are 
ornamented with finely carved foliage. 

H7 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Next beyond the hall is the site of a now 
completely lost building, called Whitehall, and 
beyond this is a fine oriel window, which 
belonged to a chamber called the presence- 
chamber. This room possesses the remarkable 
appendage of a pair of large garde-robes which 
occupy a turret, the Garde-robe Tower, which 
projects from the curtain wall immediately behind 
it, and which has already been noticed from the 
exterior. Beyond this again is the Privy Cham- 
ber, from which the fire-place in the Gatehouse 
is said to have been taken. Thus we reach the 
most ruinous, though the latest of the buildings, 
those which were built by Robert Dudley, and 
which bear the name of Leicester's buildings. 
The strong timbers which shore up this part 
of the Castle speak eloquently of the haste or 
inefficiency with which this part was erected, 
and form a strange contrast to the solid immov- 
able fabric of the Norman keep. Beyond the 
fact that they were occupied by Queen Elizabeth 
these buildings are of little interest. Beyond 
these, Henry VIII. 's lodgings and Dudley's 
lobby, buildings which have completely dis- 
appeared, filled in much of the space between 
them and the south-west tower of the keep, 
upon or in the position of the Norman curtain- 
wall which completed the Castle at that point. 

The church of Kenilworth has inserted at 
its west end a fine Norman doorway, which 
originally belonged to the Priory close at hand. 
The arch, which is carried by shafted jambs 
with carved capitals, is of three orders, the first 
148 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

enriched by a sort of fluting, the next by large 
beak-heads, and the outer by a rectangular zig- 
zag. The whole is enclosed by a square formed 
by a wide, cable-moulded, and richly diapered 
band. The abacus mouldings of the shafts run 
across the whole composition. The door and 
coarsely-designed ironwork are modern. In the 
wall of the west porch, by which the church is 
entered, there are a number of old tiles which 
have been found amongst the ruins of the Priory 
and in the lower part of the tower is a pig of 
lead, shaped something like a boat and bearing 
the mark of one of the Commissioners of Henry 
VIII. No doubt this pig was cast from the 
leaden roof of the Priory, for in many cases 
there are accounts of the melting down of the 
coverings of the roofs of religious buildings after 
the Dissolution, in order that the lead might be 
sold. The church possesses a hagioscope on the 
south side of the chancel and a piscina. In the 
window of the south transept there are a number 
of coats-of-arms in modern glass of persons 
connected with the Castle. This window was 
set up by Samuel Butler, afterwards Bishop of 
Lichfield, to whose family there are several 
monuments in the same transept. The tower 
and spire are of rather uncommon character, the 
belfry being octagonal, and the spire springing 
from it with a slight but graceful curve. At 
each angle is the remains of a kneeling angel. 
The church suffered a drastic restoration, and 
much is modern or adulterated. 

The Priory was a house of Augustinians, 
149 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Black Canons, or to give them their full name, 
Canons Regular of St Augustine, for whom it 
was founded by Geoffrey de Clinton, who 
expressly reserved from his grant of land, that 
part upon which he intended to place his castle 
and park. It was richly endowed by him, by his 
son, and by succeeding benefactors, whose gifts 
are enumerated by Dugdale, and at the time 
of the Dissolution its revenues were reckoned 
as being worth ^^5 3 3, T5S. 4d. per annum. In 
the churchyard are to be seen some remains of 
its buildings, the most prominent of which is 
the Gatehouse which is in the far corner from 
the church. It possesses a porter's lodge in 
which at present are piled up a number of fine 
carved stones from the Priory church, and some 
of the tiles which have been found in digging. 
This gatehouse led into a courtyard on the 
opposite side of which was the Granary, an 
interesting building which still exists and is used 
as a barn. Other portions of the foundations 
of the church and conventual buildings will be 
seen scattered about the churchyard. In one of 
these portions are a number of coffin-lids, one 
with a floriated cross and in another the remains 
of a large effigy. 

Stoneleigh is situated about three and a half 
miles from Kenilworth and contains several things 
worth seeing. The remains of the Abbey are 
situated in the centre of the beautiful Home 
Park, and the Deer Park lies just beyond it. 
The abbey which belonged to the Cistercian 
Order was removed to this place in 11 54, from 
150 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

Radmore, on Cannock Chase, which the com- 
munity left because they were troubled by the 
foresters. Henry II. who founded it, endowed 
the abbey with privileges '* very many and very 
great, to wit, free warren, infangthef, outfangthef, 
wayfs, strays, goods of felons and fugitives, 
tumbrel, pillory, sok, sak, tole, team, amerce- 
ments, murders, assize of bread and beer : with 
a market and fair in the town of Stoneleigh." 
There were, at this time, according to Dugdale, 
in the manor of Stoneleigh, "sixty-eight villains 
and two priests ; as also four bondmen or 
servants, whereof each held one messuage, and 
one quatrone of land, by the services of making 
the gallows and hanging of thieves : every one 
of which bondmen was to wear a red clout 
betwixt his shoulders, upon his upper garment." 
The building erected at this date was burnt in 
1245, so that what remains belongs to an edifice 
of a later date. On the dissolution of the 
abbeys, its income was returned as;£"i5i, 3s. id. 
At this time it passed to the Duke of Suffolk, 
and from him to Sir Thomas Leigh, a London 
alderman. It is now the property of Lord 
Leigh, Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire. Of 
the Abbey the gatehouse erected by Robert de 
Hockele, who died in 1 349, still exists, with 
the escutcheon in honour of Henry II., the 
founder of the Abbey, which he placed on it. 
On the east side of this building is what appears 
to have been the Guest-House and Almonry of 
the Abbey. The external part of this is little 
changed, but the internal has had windows 
151 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

inserted in the seventeenth century and has been 
otherwise altered. Of the Abbey itself, some 
portions, much altered, still remain. The 
south aisle of the church has been transferred 
into a corridor leading to the modern house, 
built in the Italian style in the year 1720. 
The remains of the chapter-house and of the 
abbot's lodgings are converted into domestic 
ofEces. The outline of the cloister court exists 
and three or four late Norman arches, and there 
remains a very fine groined undercroft now used 
as a cellar and brew-house. All the remains 
are not of a later date than the fire in 1245. 
The modern house contains many fine pictures. 

Between the Park Lodge and the village of 
Stoneleigh is a bridge over the Avon, called 
Stare Bridge, which was built by the Cistercians 
of Stoneleigh in the fourteenth century. It is a 
narrow and picturesque structure with recesses 
for foot-passengers to stand out of the way of 
horses. The Church, which is about half a 
mile off in the village, is an interesting building 
with much fine Norman work about it. This is 
to be found in the lower part of the tower, in 
the north doorway, now blocked up, which has 
a good tympanum with fishes and dragons and 
particularly in the chancel arch, which is a 
splendid specimen of the period. It has round, 
zig-zag, double cone and billet mouldings, with 
a dragon on the north side and a serpent on the 
south. The interior of the chancel has a restored 
transition arcade with zig-zag mouldings and 
contains a monument to Alice, Duchess Dudley, 
152 



KENILWORTH— STONELEIGH 

and her daughter Alicia. The effigies are in 
white marble and rest on black sarcophagi. The 
history of the end of the Dudley family is a 
curious tale. It has already been mentioned 
(p. 136) that Robert Dudley demised his pro- 
perty to his brother Ambrose, and on his death 
to his son, Sir Robert Dudley, whom he had 
by the Lady Douglas Sheffield. It is extremely 
doubtful whether Dudley was ever married to 
this lady, indeed, the fact that he undoubtedly 
married another person during Lady Sheffield's 
lifetime, seems to show that his relations to her 
were only those of an intrigue. However, after 
the death of the Earl, Sir Robert took steps to 
establish his legitimacy. 

On legal measures being taken, Letitia, 
Countess of Dudley, appealed to the Star 
Chamber which issued an order that the case 
was to stop, that all the papers connected with 
it were to be sealed up and left in the custody 
of the Council, and that no copies were to be 
taken of them without the permission of the 
King. Sir Robert obtained permission to travel 
abroad, and though afterwards called upon by 
the Privy Council to return to England, he 
never did so. He is stated to have been a 
man of great attainments, and certainly made 
influential and valuable friends abroad, for the 
Duke of Tuscany conferred upon him a suffi- 
cient pension, and the Emperor Ferdinand II. 
gave him the title of a duke. Hence the 
title of Duchess Dudley borne by his wife, 
that of the daughter being due to the fact that 

153 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Charles I. conferred that distinction upon her 
for her Hfe. The disposal of the Castle by the 
Duchess to Prince Charles has already been de- 
scribed. 

In the chancel there is also a monument in 
Eucharistic vestments to one of the former vicars 
of the church. The font should receive special 
attention, as it is a fine specimen of early Nor- 
man work. It is circular and ornamented on 
the exterior with an arcade under which are the 
figures of the twelve Apostles, habited in gar- 
ments of the period of Edward the Confessor. 

On a ridge of rock on the opposite bank of 
the river Sow to the church, is an eminence 
called Motstow Hill, "one of the most interest- 
ing English remains in the Midland Counties " 
as Mr Clark calls it. It is one of the very 
few mote hills in the district, and is mentioned 
in Domesday Book as the place where the ten- 
ant of Kenilworth did suit and service. 



54 



CHAPTER VIII 
COVENTRY 

HISTORY OF THE CITY AND ITS GUILDS 

/COVENTRY, in Domesday Book, Couen- 
trevy the town on the Couen, which latter 
is believed to be the Celtic name for the Sher- 
bourne (Scireborne, the clear stream, Saxon) 
on which the city stands, is a place of great 
antiquity, containing buildings of the first im- 
portance, and records of great value in eluci- 
dating the history of a municipality and trading 
community from a very early period down to 
the present day. Tradition says that a convent 
was established here at some period in the sixth 
century, of which St Osburg was abbess, which 
convent, according to Rous, was destroyed in 
1 01 6 by Edric. Leland again attributes the 
foundation of a convent here to Canute. What 
is quite certain is that in 1043 Leofric and his 
wife Godgifu, or as she is more generally but 
incorrectly called Godiva, founded the Bene- 
dictine monastery which was for many years 
the prime glory of the city and the seat of its 
Bishop's chair. To leave this foundation aside 
for the moment, it will be necessary to refer 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

briefly to the well-known legend associated with 
the two noble names just mentioned. The 
name of Godiva is and will always be associated 
with the celebrated but apocryphal ride which 
she is supposed to have made through the streets 
of Coventry in order to free its people from 
tolls. The first description of this ride appears 
in the writings of Roger of Wendover, who 
wrote in the commencement of the twelfth 
century, that is about one hundred years after 
the event is supposed to have taken place. 
His account is as follows : — " The Countess 
Godiva, who was a great lover of God's 
mother, longing to free the town of Coventry 
from the oppression of a heavy toll, often with 
urgent prayers besought her husband, that from 
regard to Jesus Christ and His mother, he 
would free the town from that service, and 
from all other heavy burdens ; and when the 
Earl sharply rebuked her for foolishly asking 
what was so much to his damage, and always 
forbade her for evermore to speak to him on 
the subject ; and while she, on the other hand, 
with a woman's pertinacity, never ceased to 
exasperate her husband on that matter, he at 
last made her this answer : ' Mount your horse 
and ride naked before all the people, through 
the market of the town from one end to the 
other, and on your return you shall have your 
request,' on which Godiva replied : * But 
will you give me permission if I am willing 
to do it?' *I will,' said he. Whereupon 
the Countess, beloved of God, loosed her hair 

,56 



COVENTRY 

and let down her tresses, which covered the 
whole of her body like a veil, and then mount- 
ing her horse and attended by two knights, she 
rode through the market-place without being 
seen, except her fair legs; and having completed 
the journey, she returned with gladness to her 
astonished husband, and obtained of him what 
she had asked, for Earl Leofric freed the town 
of Coventry and its inhabitants from the afore- 
said service, and confirmed what he had done 
by a charter." The apocryphal nature of 
this ride is proved amongst other things by the 
fact that no mention is made of it by other and 
more trustworthy early writers, who devote full 
attention to all the many good deeds which the 
Earl and Countess actually performed, and by 
this further fact, originally brought forward by 
the late Mr Bloxam, that the population of 
Coventry in Leofric's time could scarcely have 
exceeded three hundred and fifty souls, all in 
a greater or less degree of servitude, and dwell- 
ing probably in wooden hovels each of a single 
story, with a door, but no window. There 
was, therefore, no market on the scale con- 
templated by Roger of Wendover — hardly, 
indeed, a town through which ^Godgifu could 
have ridden ; and a mere toll would have been 
a matter of small moment when the people 
were all serfs. Those who wish to trace the 
origin and meaning of this story further, should 
consult the pages of Mr Hartland's " Science 
of Fairy Tales," where they will find that in 
all probability, the legend is one of great age 

^57 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

which points back to the primitive ceremonials 
of the early inhabitants of this country, and 
which has been engrafted on to the life of a 
historical woman without any foundation in 
fact. The legend of Peeping Tom, that 

" One low churl, compact of thankless earth, 
The fatal byword of all years to come, 
Boring a little auger-hole in fear, 
Peep'd — but his eyes, before they had their will, 
Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, 
And dropt before him. So the powers who wait 
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misus'd," 

must now be dealt with, and at the outset it may 
be mentioned that the exploit of this individual 
in all probability was tacked on to the story 
during the reign of Charles II., a period when 
such an addition to the legend seems highly 
appropriate. There is a figure of this individual 
which the visitor will see projecting from the 
upper story of a hotel, the " King's Head,'' in 
Smithford Street, to which position it appears 
to have been moved from Grey friars Lane, 
where it seems to have been originally set up in 
1678 by an Alderman Owen. This miscalled 
effigy really appears to be a figure of St George, 
equipped in armour of the period of Henry VII. 
and with his arms cut off at the elbows, " to 
favour the posture of his leaning out of window." 
To return, however, from this digression to 
the monastery and its founders. Leofric en- 
dowed it not only with half the town of 
Coventry, a small enough place at that time, 
but with twenty-four other lordships in War- 

158 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

wickshire and other counties. The abbey was 
so rich at a later period from the gifts which it 
had received, that WilHam of Malmesbury says 
of it, "it was enriched and beautified with so 
much gold and silver, that the walls seemed too 
narrow to contain it ; insomuch that Rob. de 
Limesie, bishop of this diocese in the time of 
King William Rufus, scraped from one beam 
that supported the shrines, 500 marks of silver.'' 
Britton says that "among the reliques was an 
arm of St Augustine, placed in a silver shrine, 
on which was an inscription purporting that it 
was purchased of the Pope by Agelnethus, 
Archbishop of Canterbury." Leofric died in 
1057, and was buried in the monastery church 
as was his wife Godgifu, who also had been a 
most generous supporter of religious houses. 
She founded the Abbey of Stow, near Lincoln, 
and at her death, the date of which is uncertain, 
bequeathed all her treasure to the Abbey at 
Coventry, and, " even at the point of death, 
gave a rich chain of precious stones, directing 
it to be put about the neck of the blessed Virgin's 
image, so that those who came of devotion 
thither should say as many prayers as there were 
several gems therein." Shortly after the Norman 
Conquest, Coventry came into the possession of 
the Earls of Chester by the marriage of Ranulph 
with Lucia, grand-daughter of Leofric. The 
son of this Earl took the side of Maud in the 
conflicts between the Empress and Stephen, and 
after a fight at Lincoln returned to Coventry to 
find that his castle there was occupied by the 



COVENTRY 

King's troops whom he was unable to dislodge, 
and was obliged to retire from the siege desper- 
ately wounded. 

In the reign of Henry III. the city became 
concerned in the siege of Kenilworth, already 
described at an earlier page (p. 129), for it was 
here that the twelve nobles and prelates met and 
drew up the Dictum de Kenilworth. In 1344 
Edward III. granted a municipal charter to the 
city, and a few years afterwards the erection 
of the city walls was commenced. These were 
of great strength and eventually extended to a 
circuit of three miles. They were guarded by 
thirty-two towers, and possessed twelve principal 
gates, each of which was defended by a port- 
cullis. Of these walls, with their gates and 
towers, there is a picture in Dugdale's War- 
wickshire, for they persisted until his day having 
been pulled down by Charles II. as a retaliation 
upon the city for having refused to admit his 
father. All that now remains of them are two 
of the gates, one of which Swanswell or the 
Priory Gate in Hales Street, has been converted 
into dwellings, the archway having been blocked 
up, whilst the other or Cook Street Gate, situated 
in Jesson Street, is a mere shell, with no roof. 
In 1397 the town was appointed as the place 
of combat between the Dukes of Hereford and 
Norfolk by Richard II., arrangements being 
made for the lists at Gosford Green just outside 
the town, though the actual combat was pre- 
vented by the banishment of the two adversaries 
by the King, a step which eventually led to his 
160 



COVENTRY 

own deposition. The Duke of Hereford having 
become Henry IV., held a parliament here in 
the great chamber of the Priory, which, from the 
exclusion of all lawyers, was afterwards called, 
doubtless on the motion of a lawyer, Parlia- 
mentum indoctorum. In 141 1 his son, Shakes- 
peare's Prince Hal, was arrested for some 
disturbance of the peace, by the Mayor for the 
time being, John Horneby, a deed which does 
not seem to have met with the same celebrity 
as the Prince's similar adventure with Chief 
Justice Gascoigne. It was during this reign 
also, to turn from history for a moment, that 
Shakespeare makes Falstaff ashamed to march 
through the town with his regiment of scare- 
crows, with " but a shirt and a half in all the 
company." Henry VI. conferred the title of 
City upon Coventry, severing it and a district 
of four miles around from Warwickshire, and 
converting it into a county of itself, under the 
name of the City and County of the City of 
Coventry. This was in 1 45 i and* eight years 
later, the same king held a parliament here, in 
the chapterhouse of the Priory, which was 
called, on account of the great number of 
attainders which were passed against the Duke 
of York and his adherents, the Parliamentum 
Diabolicum, a nickname, of course, invented by 
the Yorkists. It may have been to celebrate 
this visit that the magnificent tapestry in St 
Mary's Hall was made (see p. 180). 

In 1465 Edward IV., with his queen, spent 
their Christmas in Coventry, but five years later, 

L 161 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

during his struggle with the King-Maker, he was 
refused admission to the city and was obliged to 
pass on to Warwick. After the battles of Barnet 
and Tewkesbury had completed the downfall of 
his enemies, the King revenged himself upon the 
burghers of Coventry by withdrawing their 
charter, which was only restored to them after 
the payment of a fine of 500 marks. The 
King again visited the city in 1474, when he 
kept the feast of St George within its walls. 
In the same year his son, Prince Edward, after- 
wards the ill-fated Edward V., was godfather 
to a child of the Mayor's, and three years later 
was admitted a Brother of the Guilds of Corpus 
Christi and the Holy Trinity. Richard III. 
visited the city and was a spectator of the 
pageants with which the festival of Corpus 
Christi was celebrated. After the battle of 
Bosworth Field Henry VII. visited Coventry 
and was lodged in the Mayor's house, on which 
occasion the citizens presented him with ;£^ioo 
and a magnificent gold cup. Henry VIII. and 
Queen Katherine were in the city in 1 5 10, when, 
as Dugdale states, "there were three pageants 
set forth ; one at Jordan Well, with the nine 
orders of angels ; one at Broadgate, with divers 
beautiful damsels ; and one at Cross Cheping ; 
and so they passed on to the Priory." The 
dissolution seems to have had a serious effect 
upon the prosperity of the city, for a letter from 
John Hales to the Protector Somerset states, 
" that, in consequence of the dissolution, trade 
grew so low, and there was such a dispersion of 
162 



COVENTRY 

people from this city, that there were not above 
3000 inhabitants, whereas formerly there had 
been 1 5,000." In 1 565 Queen Elizabeth 
visited Coventry, and was received with splendid 
shows and pageants. The apocryphal story of 
her entrance into the city is that the Mayor 
made the following address to the Sovereign : — 

" We men of Coventree 
Are very glad to see 
Your gracious Majestie 

Good Lord, how fair ye bee I " 

To which the Queen's reply was : — 

" Our gracious Majestie 
Is very glad to see 
Ye men of Coventree 

Good lack, what fools ye bee ! " 

an incident which is said to have taken place 
near the Whitefriars monastery. The real oc- 
currences, as given in the " History and Antiqui- 
ties of Coventry," are sufficiently interesting to 
be worth repeating. " The sheriffs, in their 
scarlet cloaks, and twenty young men on horse- 
back, in a livery of fine purple, met her majesty 
at the extremity of the liberties of the city, 
towards Wolvey ; each of them presented to her 
a white rod, which she receiving delivered to 
them again ; they then rode before her until 
they came near the city, where the Mayor and 
aldermen, in their scarlet gowns, also met her 
majesty." After several ceremonies "the re- 
corder presented a purse supposed to be worth 
twenty marks, and in it ;^ioo in angels, which 
163 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

the Queen accepting was pleased to say to her 
lords, " It is a good gift, an hundred pounds in 
gold ; I have but few such gifts." To which 
the Mayor answered boldly, " If it please your 
grace, there is a great deal more in it." " What 
is that ? " said she. " The hearts," repHed he, 
" of all your loving subjects." " We thank 
you, Mr Mayor," said the Queen ; " it is a great 
deal more, indeed." Coventry, in spite of its 
liberal reception of the Queen, was still suffering 
from serious depression, as we may gather from 
the speech of the Recorder on this occasion. 
In 1566 the unhappy Mary, Queen of Scots, 
was a prisoner in the Mayoress' parlour attached 
to St Mary's Hall according to the MS. annals 
of the city, but Mr Sharp thinks that the entry 
really refers to her removal to Coventry for 
security, under the care of the Earls of Hunt- 
ingdon and Shrewsbury, in the year 1569, when 
it is said she was kept in confinement in an 
inn called the Black Bull, which was situated 
in that part of the town now occupied by the 
barracks. At anyrate, amongst the muniments, 
is a letter, dated 1570, from the Queen Eliza- 
beth to the Mayor, giving instructions for her safe 
keeping. The inhabitants of the city seem to 
have offended James I. by that ultra-puritanical 
spirit, which led them later on to be strong 
adherents of the Parliamentarian party, for in 
1 610 he addressed a letter to the Mayor, alder- 
men and sheriffs, and the archdeacon of Coventry, 
directing the citizens to receive the Sacrament 
kneeling, in which he states that he has " given 
164 



COVENTRY 

especiall Charge to our Servant, the Bishop of 
that Diocese, to see this abuse reformed." The 
King seems to have been very anxious about this 
matter, for in 1619, when a renewal of the city's 
charter was asked for, he refused to grant it un- 
less he was assured that the directions which he 
had given were complied with. He was not even 
satisfied with a letter from the Bishop stating 
that there were not more than seven persons in 
the city who were refractory, but required further 
information from the Archdeacon. The King 
himself visited the city in 161 7, when the ad- 
dress was read to him by Philemon Holland, the 
well-known translator, and a cup of silver with 
;^ioo in money presented to him. This address 
also alludes to the depressed state of the city's 
affairs. During the Civil War the city, as 
already mentioned, was strongly parliamentarian. 
Charles himself, in 161 4, was outside the walls, 
and demanded entrance by a herald. The citi- 
zens who had been reinforced by 400 men from 
Birmingham, of like sympathies with themselves, 
offered to admit the King himself and 200 men, 
but no more. " Incensed at this treatment, the 
King's party planted cannon on Stiviehall Hill 
in the park, as also on the brow of the little park 
quarry, and fired several shot against the walls of 
the town, but with little effect ; one man only 
was killed, and he through his own carelessness. 
The King, finding the citizens determined to 
defend themselves, and hearing that Lord Brooke, 
with an army from London was approaching, 
drew off his forces that night. Some few days 

165 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



afterwards Lord Brooke arrived with an army 
of 7000 foot, exclusive of cavalry. At this 
time many of the Royalists, who had worn the 
Earl of Northampton's colours (when he, as 
City Recorder, tried to rally the Royalists of 
the town), were sent prisoners to Warwick, 
whilst the property of others who had fled was 
sequestered." 

In the next year the city was garrisoned in 
the same interest, one of the aldermen, named 
Barker, being appointed governor. The forti- 
fications of the place were strengthened and 
earthworks thrown up outside it. Even the 
women seem to have shared in the enthusiasm 
to such an extent as to drive them into the field 
as labourers in the cause, for we are told that 
" they went by companies into the great park to 
fill iip the quarries, that they might not at a 
future period harbour the enemy. They were 
collected together by sound of a drum, and 
marched in military order, with mattocks and 
spades, under the command of an amazon named 
Adderley, with an Herculean club upon her 
shoulder ; and were conducted from work by 
one Mary Herbert, who carried a pistol in her 
hand, which she discharged as a signal of 
dismissal." 

At the Restoration the citizens showed as 
much joy as if they had always been staunch 
adherents of the Stuarts. Drums were beaten, 
trumpets sounded, and the different companies of 
infantry fired several volleys on the occasion. A 
deputation shortly visited the King, and presented 
166 






COVENTRY 

him with a basin and ewer of gold with fifty 
pieces of money ; at the same time surrendering 
to him all the King's lands with the great park. 
On the day of the coronation Smithford Street 
and Cross- Cheaping conduits ran claret ; and 
bonfires were lighted in the evening in testimony 
of loyalty. James II. also visited Coventry, and 
on receiving the usual gold cup, handed it over to 
Lord Dartmouth, who accompanied him, as a 
memorial of what Colonel Legge, the Earl's 
father, had suffered at the hands of the citizens. 
In later years the city has been visited by Queen 
Anne, and by William III. Once celebrated 
for the manufacture of ribbons and watches, the 
town was falling into a state of depression on the 
decline of these industries, when the bicycle 
industry arose to raise it to a fresh condition of 
prosperity. 

In the above account no mention has been 
made of the history of the various edifices and 
institutions of the city, since this deficiency will 
be supplied as each is considered in its turn, but 
any historical sketch would be incomplete with- 
out some notice of the Coventry Guilds and the 
Mystery plays, which it was their custom to per- 
form. The following notes are drawn largely 
from Mr Sharp's "Materials" and from an 
article in Bygone Warwickshire, on the Coventry 
Trading Guilds, by Mr Fretton, a recognised 
authority on the subject. 

The oldest of the more religious as opposed to 
the trade guilds was that of St Mary, "which 
was founded by virtue of a license given by 
167 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

Edward III. in 1340, and this Guild it was 
directed should hold an annual meeting of the 
Master, Brothers and Sisters, on the day of Our 
Lady's Assumption, " en la sale n're dame," 
that is in St Mary's Hall. At a later date 
three other Guilds, which had been constituted, 
viz., those of the Holy Trinity, of St John the 
Baptist, and of St Katherine, were amalgamated 
with it, and the combined body became known 
as the Guild of the Holy Trinity, though its hall 
retained its original name, and is still called St 
Mary's Hall. Many royal and noble persons were 
enrolled as brethren and sisters of this powerful 
Guild, and amongst them may be mentioned 
Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, Henry 
VII. and Elizabeth of York, and, as has already 
been mentioned, Edward V. whilst still Prince 
Edward. A list of many other noted brethren 
is given by Dugdale, who also has preserved for 
us the form of petition for admission to the Guild, 
and the oath to be taken at the ceremony of 
reception. The petition runs : " Maister, we 
beseech you, at the reverence of the holy Trinity, 
that you will receive us to be Brethren of this 
place with you." And the oath : " Ye shall be 
good and true, and each of you shall be good and 
true to the Master of the Gild of the holy 
Trinity, our Lady, St John, and St Katherine 
of Coventre, and to all the Brethren and Sisters 
of the same Gild ; and all the good Rules and 
ordinances by the said Master and his Brethren 
afore this time made, and hereafter to be made, 
and your days of payment truly for to keep to 
168 



COVENTRY 

your power, so God you help and all Saints." 
Dugdale also mentions a Guild of Corpus Christi, 
founded in the reign of Edward III., of which 
Edward V. was a Brother, which Guild assisted 
in the payments of the priests of the Churches of 
St Michael and Holy Trinity. The Sheremen 
and Tailors also had a Guild, founded in honour 
of the Nativity of Our Lord, in the reign of 
Richard II. These Guilds were very touchy as 
to any infringements upon the prerogatives which 
they had obtained from various monarchs, for 
Dugdale narrates how they combined to crush 
an imitation Guild which the young men had 
formed. " The young people," he says, " viz., 
Journeymen of several trades, observing what 
merry-meetings and feasts their Masters had, by 
being of those Fraternities, and that they them- 
selves wanted the like pleasure, did of their own 
accord assemble together in several places of the 
City, and especially in St George s Chappel, 
near Gosford Gate, which occasioned the Mayor 
and his Brethren, in 3 H.6., to complain thereof 
to the King ; alledging, that the said Journeymen, 
in these their unlawful meetings, called them- 
selves St George his Gild, to the intent that they 
might maintain and abet one another in quarrels ; 
and for their better conjunction had made choyce 
of a Master, with Clerks and Officers, to the 
great contempt of the K. authority, prejudice of 
the other Gilds [y'1%., the holy Trin. and Corp. 
Christi) and disturbance of the City. Where- 
upon the King directed his Writ to the Mayor 
and Justices, with the BaylifFs of this City, com- 

169 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

manding them by Proclamation to prohibite any 
more such meetings." 

The trading guilds resembled in every respect 
the city companies of London, and have in many 
cases persisted to this day, though in some in- 
stances the only reason for the existence of the 
body is a feeling that an old institution should 
not be allowed to disappear. Such, according 
to Mr Fretton, is the case with the Worsted 
Weavers and Cappers. In other cases the Guild 
persists, but with strikingly altered objects. Thus 
the Guild of the Fullers or Tailors (as Dugdale 
calls them) and Sheremen, of which mention 
has been made, had died down to one brother in 
1387. He nominated a second, and thus it 
reniained until i860, when the number being 
again reduced to one, he made seven others. 
This Guild, at the time Mr Fretton wrote, 
existed for Archaeological purposes, and he 
himself was their clerk. 

The oldest and one of the most important of 
these bodies was the Baker's Company, which 
dates back to the sixth year of King John. It 
was, no doubt, essentially a trade organisation 
for the protection of its members, the Mayor, on 
the other hand, being supposed to look after the 
interests of the citizens, and see that the weight 
and quality of the bread were up to the mark. 
If he neglected this duty, they had a rough and 
ready way of recalling him to the remembrance 
of his responsibility, for in 1387, the MS. annals 
of the city state that « the Commons rose and 
threw loaves of bread at the Mayor's head, in 
170 



COVENTRY 

St Mary's Hall, because the bakers kept not the 
assize, neither did the Mayor punish them accord- 
ing to his office." What happened when the 
Mayor was also a Baker does not appear, at any 
rate six belonging to that body occupied the 
position "of chief magistrate between the years 
1528 and 1664. The Bakers assisted in the 
Mystery or Miracle Plays for which Coventry 
was famous, and which were chiefly arranged by 
and carried on under the auspices of the Fran- 
ciscans or Grey Friars. Not being a very 
wealthy company, the Bakers were unable to 
arrange for a pageant by themselves, and were 
therefore united with the Armourers or Smiths, 
and the representation of which they had charge 
was that of the Condemnation and Crucifixion of 
Christ. Mr Fretton enumerates some of the 
charges for this purpose which were entered in 
the books of account of the fraternity ; — 

It. p"^ for V. schepskens for god's cote and for 

makyng, iijs. 
It. p'^ to John Croo for mendyng of Herod's 

hed, and a myteer and other thyngs, ijs. 
It. p^ to Wattis for dressyng of the devells hede, 

viijd. 
It. p*^ for mendyng of Pilatts hatt, iiij d. 

The Reformation putting an end to these 
pageants, the Bakers took their share in the later 
shows of the town, assisting at the first introduc- 
tion of the Godiva procession in 1678, when the 
part of the Countess was enacted by a youth 
named Swinnerton. 

171 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

And lastly, in 1892, the Guild, now known 
as the Master Bakers' Association, took part in 
the Godiva procession, headed by their banner 
two hundred years old. Some of the ordinances 
drawn up for this Guild in the time of Henry 
VIII., and contained in their Black Book, might 
well form rules for the trade at large at the pre- 
sent day. None who had outward sores or 
scabs, or who were intemperate or of immoral 
lives, were to make "dowe.'' Trade secrets^ 
were not to be betrayed. None were to bake 
or to carry bread into the country on the sabbath 
day. The brethren not to go to law with each 
other. No slander or opprobrious words allowed. 
The master to see if weights and scales were 
correct. Mens* wives not to carry bread to any 
inn, tavern or alehouse. 

The Mercers' Guild is regarded as the senior 
of those still in existence in the city. The date 
of its origin is unknown, but it was wealthy and 
ancient in 1448. In 1589 it had a room at St 
Mary's Hall for storing armour, for they found 
thirty armed men for the defence of the city ; 
and charges for the cleaning of this armour, 
which was used annually in the civic processions, 
are frequently to be found in the accounts of the 
Guild. It had chapels in both the great churches 
of the city, as will appear when they are 
described. 

The Drapers is the wealthiest existing Com- 
pany, and has a hall of its own next to St 
Mary's Hall. This Guild owed its origin to 
William Walsham, valet and sub-bailifF to 
172 



COVENTRY 

Queen Isabel, wife of Edward II., to whom 
the erection of St John's Collegiate Church 
may be mainly ascribed, which would take the 
foundation of the Company back to the middle 
of the fourteenth century. The books of this 
Guild contain many interesting entries showing 
what the duties and responsibilities of its mem- 
bers were. Any member who absented himself 
from the burial of a brother at the command of 
a master, or refused to assist in bearing his 
corpse to the grave, was to pay 6d. without 
any grace. Every master draper was to pay 
for every apprentice towards the light in the 
rood loft, and for every journeyman he em- 
ployed, 4d. ; and if he had no apprentice he 
was to pay 4d. for himself. Every master 
was required to pay towards the making clean 
the Chapel of our Lady (still known as the 
Draper's Chapel) in St Michael's Church, and 
strewing the seats with rushes in summer, and 
pease- straw in winter, everyone yearly 2d. 
" Every freeman of the Company dwelling in 
the city (excepting such as have been Mayors), 
shall sit in the Draper's Chapel every Sabbath 
day at Morning Prayer (when there is warning 
given by the Master and Wardens), and their 
apprentices to sit before them on pain of I2d., 
or lawful excuse made." The Mercers were 
a wealthy Company, and well able to maintain 
a pageant, and that of the Doomsday was their 
responsibility. 

As the Mystery plays have been several times 
incidentally mentioned in connection with the 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 



guilds by which they were so largely performed 
this part of our subject should not be left 
without some further description of these early 
dramas. They took place chiefly at the festi- 
val of Corpus Christi, and were performed upon 
moveable stages, called p^^geants, and divided 
into several storeys in some cases. The lower 
platform next to the ground was curtained off 
by linen, sometimes painted with devices illus- 
trative of the play to be performed, and called 
" paijont clothes," behind which was the dress- 
ing-room of the performers. On the morning of 
the performance, all the members of the guilds 
attended Mass in their respective Chapels, after 
which they entertained the performers at break- 
fast. This done the procession took place in 
which the various guilds with their banners 
marched through the city, in front of the Host 
which was carried in a " sonne " or monstrance 
and followed by the clergy. The Corpus 
Christi Guild provided the monstrance, and that 
of the Holy Trinity a canopy. Amongst the 
laity walked many of those who were to per- 
form clad in the garments appropriate to their 
characters. Thus the Rev. G. Tyack, to whose 
paper I am indebted for these facts, points out 
that in the records of a procession the follow- 
ing were included : The Blessed Virgin, for 
whom the Corpus Christi Guild in 1501 pro- 
vided a silver gilt crown at a cost of 43 s. 9d. ; 
St Gabriel the archangel, with a lily, the 
emblem of the Annunciation ; the Twelve 
Apostles carrying wax tapers, and eight holy 

174 






COVENTRY 

Virgins led by St Catherine and St Margaret. 
After the procession the pageants started on 
their rounds, for the same play was performed 
in succession in different parts of the town. 
So that the drapers who acted Doomsday, and 
in the course of their performance destroyed 
the world in flames, required several of these 
properties, and we find amongst their accounts 
such entries as " payd to Crowe for makyng of 
iij worldys, ijs. The performance commenced 
with a preface or " protestacyon " which like 
the play was rhymed, and often consisted of 
a mixture of Latin and English words, as in 
St Michael's summons to judgment : — 

•' Surgite, all men Aryse 
Venite ad judicium 
For now is sett ye hy justice." 

The garments of many of the performers are 
entered in the accounts, thus the represen- 
tative of our Lord wore a coat of white 
leather painted and gilded, and a " chevel 
gyld," that is a gilt wig. Herod was the 
favourite low-comedy character and a stage- 
direction states that at a certain point " Erode 
ragis in ye pagond and in the strete also." 
Herod's rages have left their mark on litera- 
ture, for Shakespeare brings them in allusively 
in several places, such as "it out-Herods 
Herod," and others. Pilate was for some 
reason, perhaps because the part was an unpopu- 
lar one, paid the highest salary, and he alone 
of all the performers had wine instead of beer 
during the performance. Many properties 

175 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

were required for these performances, the most 
elaborate of which was Hell-mouth, used in 
the Doomsday and consisting of a huge grotes- 
que head of canvas, with long teeth, from 
which flames issued. The jaws were " prac- 
ticable," and through them the devil appeared 
upon the stage to carry off his prey. Those 
familiar with fresco paintings of thee doom of 
a pre- Reformation period will remember that 
Hell-mouth is frequently there represented just 
as it was on the stage of the Mystery play. 



176 



CHAPTER IX 
COVENTRY 

ITS BUILDINGS - ST MARy's HALL - ST MICHAEl's 
CHURCH - HOLY TRINITY - CATHEDRAL REMAINS 
-CHRIST CHURCH - BABLAKE - BONd's AND FORd's 
ALMSHOUSES - WHITE FRIARS 

\A/ E may now turn from the history of the 
town to its buildings as they exist at 
the present day, and commence by studying 
that old-time centre of civic Hfe, St Mary's 
Hall, the " Chamber of Princes " as it used 
to be called, when princes were more frequent 
visitors to Coventry than they have been in 
these later days. Its erection was commenced 
in 1394? finished in 14I4, and it was rebuilt 
in 1580. It was originally the property of 
the combined Coventry Guilds, as was men- 
tioned when dealing with those bodies. It is 
entered by a porch with a vaulted roof, the 
keystone of which bears a representation of the 
Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, no doubt on 
account of the fact that she was the patroness 
of the Guild to whom the hall originally be- 
longed. The Annunciation is represented on 
the impost of the inner arch on the right 

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side, whilst on the opposite is a collection of 
grotesque animals. On the right side of the 
courtyard is the crypt under the great hall, 
consisting of two chambers, a larger and a 
smaller, the former being vaulted in eight bays. 
Opposite the entrance to the courtyard, and at 
right angles to the crypt is the kitchen, for- 
merly the hall of the Merchants' or St Mary's 
Guild. On the left of the courtyard is the 
entrance to a lobby in which is a statue supposed 
to be intended for Henry VI. This was a 
part of the Cross, and was brought here when 
that ornament of the city was taken down in 
1771. The Cross was situated in Cross 
Cheaping, and was, according to Dugdale, 
who supports his statement by a picture which 
shows that he was not saying too much, "one 
of the chief things wherein this city most 
glories, which for workmanship and beauty is 
inferior to none in England." It was com- 
menced in 1541 and finished in 1544, and 
was erected in pursuance of a bequest of ;^200 
made by Sir William Hollies, at one time 
Lord Mayor of London. Near this figure 
and at the side of the staircase is a small 
doorway leading into the muniment room, 
which contains a singularly valuable and inter- 
esting collection of charters and other docu- 
ments relating to the city, many of which are 
exposed to view in glass cases. The follow- 
ing are of special interest: (i) From Ranulph, 
Earl of Chester, in the reign of Henry II. 
This is the earliest ddcutnent in the eollectioni 

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(2) From Cardinal Wolsey appointing a gov- 
ernor for the city. (3) From Anne Boleyn 
announcing the birth of the Princess Eliza- 
beth. (4) From Edward VI., with a beauti- 
fully illuminated headline. (5). A mandate of 
Charles I. to the civic authorities of Coventry, 
Sutton Coldfield, Stratford - on - Avon, and 
Birmingham requiring them to provide a ship 
of 400 tons buiden, with 160 men and to 
victual the same. This is a particularly inter- 
esting document, because it shows the relative 
size and importance of the places named at 
that period, for the expenditure is to be divided 
into fifths, two of which fell to the lot of 
Coventry, and one apiece to each of the others. 
Nothing brings out more clearly the com- 
paratively recent growth of Birmingham than 
the fact that its rateable value was only reck- 
oned as being equal to that of Stratford and 
Sutton Coldfield just before the Commonwealth. 
(6 and 7) Two charters of Charles II. with 
excellent likenesses of that king. There are 
also charters of James I. and EHzabeth with 
portraits of those sovereigns. Passing up the 
staircase and through an upper lobby hung with 
Flemish tapestry the Great Hall is reached. 
This is 70 feet in length, 30 feet broad, and 
34 feet high. It has a fine carved oak roof 
which, says Sharp, " exhibits on the centre of 
each beam admirable whole length figures of 
angels playing on various musical instruments, 
viz., the crewth, trumpet, cittern, harp, and 
bass flute." It is lit by seven Perpendicular 

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windows, of which that on the north, that is 
on the side opposite to the entrance, contains 
considerably restored ancient glass, bearing a 
number of coats-of-arms and figures of different 
kings. The glass in the other six windows is 
modern. Some of the glass taken from the 
north window when it was restored in 1893 
is in the Oriel, a projection on the left hand 
side of the room, containing a carved buffet of 
the fifteenth century, and some of the old tiles 
with which the hall was paved until in 1755 it 
was floored with wood. A doorway on the north 
side of the Oriel leads into a passage contrived 
in the thickness of the wall, which originally 
led to a gallery on the outside of the building 
from which the decisions of the Court's Leet 
used to be announced to the citizens below. At 
the south end of the hall is the Minstrel Gallery, 
from which leads off a room which was origin- 
ally the Armoury. On the front of the gallery 
are a number of pieces of armour and beneath it 
are doorways leading to the council rooms. The 
object of chief importance in this hall is, how- 
ever, the magnificent piece of tapestry which 
hangs on the north wall beneath the great 
window. Like the window it is divided into 
three parts by upright divisions, and as these 
divisions correspond with the mullions of the 
window, it may be taken that it was executed 
to occupy the position in which it now hangs. 
It is of Arras manufacture and was probably 
made late in the fifteenth or early in the six- 
teenth century. The first mention of it which 
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appears in the Gild and City accounts is in 
I 519, "It' to ij men, y'take upon them to me'de 
y® cloth of aras, by advice of M' Meir & his 
bred " [i.e. Mr Mayor and his brethren), " xxvjs. 
vijd." One other entry is found relating to it 
and that is in 1605, when a charge is made in 
the city accounts of 4s. 6d. "for vj. ells of linen 
clothe, to line the cloth of arras at S. Mary's 
Hall." This piece of tapestry was very carefully 
described by Mr Scharf, in " Archaeologia," 
1856, to which those anxious for a more de- 
tailed description are referred. The subjects 
treated occupy six compartments arranged in 
two rows of three each. In the centre of the 
lower row is the Blessed Virgin, attended by 
angels and adored by the Apostles, whilst a 
king and his nobles and a queen and her ladies 
fill the spaces on her right and left respectively. 
Mr Sharp states that the king is Henry VI., and 
that the whole piece of tapestry illustrates the 
close connection between this king, who, it will 
be remembered, with his queen became members 
of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, and the City 
of Coventry. Behind the king is Cardinal 
Beaufort, and amongst the other personages 
" one nearest the King, with a jewel in his cap, 
is with no small reason supposed to be * the good 
Duke Humphry.' " The queen in the opposite 
compartment, if this identification be correct is, 
of course, Margaret of Anjou. In the upper 
row is a figure of Justice enthroned and sur- 
rounded by angels holding the instruments of 
the Passion. This incongruous conjunction is 
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due to the fact that, as will be readily seen, 
the figure of Justice is an insertion of the puritan 
period. It is probably that the original figure, 
which may have been a Trinity, or Christ 
enthroned, offended the susceptibilities of the 
time, and considering what was the temperature 
of Coventry puritanism, we may congratulate 
ourselves that the tapestry escaped complete 
demolition. Mr Scharf thinks that the remains 
of a handsome throne and part of a richly 
embroidered mantle, may have been a seated 
figure of Christ in full robes, a subject often 
painted at that period. " Had it been," he 
proceeds, " a representation of the Trinity with 
the first Person holding a crucifix, I do not 
think we should have had the Angels, with the 
instruments of the Passion, but rather the four 
emblems of the Evangelists, as on the canopy 
of the tomb of the Black Prince at Canterbury, 
and various MS. illuminations." On either side 
of this central figure are groups of male and 
female saints, most of whom are identifiable by 
their emblems. The hall is adorned by a num- 
ber of portraits, of which special mention may be 
made of those of Charles II. and James II. by 
Lely, and of George III. and George IV. by 
Lawrence. The Mayoress' parlour is approached 
by a door exactly opposite the Oriel, from which 
there is a short flight of stairs. This is the room 
in which tradition states that Mary Queen of 
Scots was imprisoned. It contains portraits of 
Queen Mary by Antonio More, and of Queen 
Elizabeth, also a picture of Lady Godiva's ride, 
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which may have been that seen in the hall by the 
" captain, lieutenant and ancient of the military 
company of Norwich/' when they travelled in the 
Midlands in August 1634. They state in their 
MS. account preserved amongst those belonging 
to the Lansdowne collection in the British 
Museum, that the hall was adorned at the upper 
end * with rich hangings,' by which they mean 
the tapestry just described, " and all about with 
fayre pictures, one more especially of a noble 
lady (the Lady Godiva) whose memory they 
have cause not to forget," rehearsing then the 
Godiva legend. It also contains a finely-carved 
oak seat, surmounted by the city arms, the 
elephant and castle. The earliest mention of 
this chair is in 1 560. 

St Michael's Church is situated immediately 
opposite to St Mary's Hall. It is a splendid 
specimen of Perpendicular architecture, and for 
spaciousness has few rivals amongst parish 
churches in this country. The fine tower and 
spire, which have recently been thoroughly re- 
paired, were, like most of the rest of the church, 
due to the generosity of a family of the name of 
Botoner, who flourished in Coventry in the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. According 
to tradition, there used to be a brass plate in the 
church which summed up their benefactions in 
the following manner : — 

" William and Adam built the Tower 
Ann and Mary built the spire ; 
William and Adam built the church 
Ann and Mary built the quire." 

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The tower was bailt between the years 1373 and 
1394, the two brothers paying ;^ioo annually 
for its construction during that period. The two 
sisters added the spire, the erection of which 
was commenced in 1432. The tower is 136 
feet in height, and from it rises a lantern octa- 
gonal in shape, 32 feet in height, with windows 
to the four cardinal points and supported by 
flying buttresses. The lantern is surmounted 
by the spire which is itself i 30 feet high, the 
entire elevation thus reaching 298 feet. The 
church which was so largely constructed by 
this family was not the first edifice on this site. 
The first notice of a church here is contained in 
a grant made to the Prior and Convent of St 
Mary of the Chapel of St Michael. Of this 
building, which was of the Norman period, por- 
tions have from time to time been discovered. 
This was succeeded in the thirteenth century by 
a church of early English architecture of which 
there are some remains, the south porch, parts of 
the walls and the south-west doorway having 
belonged to it. The south porch has a parvise 
above it which served for a time as the hall of 
the Cappers' Company. The choir is of some- 
what earlier date than the nave, and is terminated 
by a pentagonal apse. A sacristy runs round the 
lower portion on the exterior and is connected 
with the main fabric by flying buttresses. It 
will be noticed that the chancel is not the direct 
continuation of the nave but makes an angle with 
it, a feature noticeable in some other churches, 
such as that at Wantage. On entering the 
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church the visitor cannot but be struck by its 
great spaciousness, due in part to its length, 
which is 293 feet 9 inches, but chiefly to the fact 
that it possesses five aisles, giving it an extreme 
breadth of 127 feet. The inner aisles which are 
separated from the body of the church by an 
arcade of four centred arches of six bays, extend 
as far east as the apse, but the lateral aisles, which 
formerly constituted chapels, do not extend so 
far. The church also has an extraordinarily 
light appearance, due in large part to the fact 
that the clerestory windows are so close together 
as to really form one long window. The roof 
which is of low pitch is of oak. After noticing 
the fine arch leading into the lower stage of the 
tower and the vaulting of this stage 90 feet 
above the ground, the visitor should make the 
circuit of the chapels. Commencing at the south 
side, and next to the tower is the Dyer's Chapel, 
used as the Baptistery, which contains a marble 
monument to Dame Mary Bridgeman, widow of 
Sir Orlando Bridgeman, who was Chief Justice 
of the Common Pleas and Lord Keeper of the 
Great Seal after the Restoration. His son, Sir 
Henry Bridgeman, became the first Lord Brad- 
ford. This chapel in later times was called the 
Mourner's Chapel from the fact that persons 
used there to await the arrival of the dead who 
were being brought to burial. On the wall of 
the south porch are several monuments of which 
a brass on the east side of the doorway to Ann 
Sewel (ob. Dec. 20, 1609) is worthy of notice 
as a faithful reproduction of the dress of that 

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period. Beyond the porch is St Thomas' or 
the Cappers' Chapel, this company it will be 
remembered having their place of meeting in the 
adjoining parvise. There is a large monument 
in this chapel to members of the Hopkins family, 
two of whom served in seven successive parlia- 
ments each. This chapel terminates the lateral 
south aisle. The east end of the main south 
aisle is the situation of the Mercer's Chapel, the 
dedication of which is unknown. The doorway 
into the vestry made in 1750, at the same date 
as the other doorway into this chapel from 
the exterior, occupies the position of the altar. 
There is an altar tomb with renaissance details in 
this chapel, known as Wade's tomb, and tradi- 
tionally the resting-place of a citizen of that 
name who was living in Coventry in 1557. It 
is interesting as showing the intermixture of 
Gothic and Italian styles, a transition between 
the two periods. Above this is a tablet with 
an inscription worth reading on account of its 
ridiculous terminology which describes itself as 
" an Elegicall epitaph, made upon the death of 
that mirror of women, Ann Newdigate, Lady 
Skeffington, wife of that true moaneing turtle, 
Sir Richard SkefEngton, K*- & consecrated to 
her eternal memorie by the unfeigned lover of 
her vertues, Willm. Bulstrode, Knight." At 
the east end of the chapel is another altar 
tomb with three recumbent efEgies of Elizabeth 
Swillington (ob. 1552) and her two husbands, 
Thomas Essex, in armour, and Ralph Swil- 
lington, Recorder of Coventry and Attorney- 
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General, in his gown and chain of office. 
Beyond the apse and, therefore, on the north 
side of the church, is the chapel of Our Lady 
or Drapers' Chapel, also called " Capella supra 
Montem," or " the chapel on the Hill," which 
is the most important of the chapels of the 
church and was that in which the chaplains of 
St Mary's Guild said Mass and other services, 
they being instructed to perform these devotions 
"en le Schapel de n're Dame" by an order 
made by the Master and Fraternity in 1350. 
Other ordinances in connection with the Guild of 
Drapers and this chapel have already been men- 
tioned. At the west end is a screen of carved 
wood gathered from various parts of the church, 
and near to it are a number of stalls with 
miserere seats, provided with the usual carvings 
on the under surface. These are very excellent 
examples of this class of carvings, and one which 
is close to the entrance from the church, which 
represents a body in a winding sheet being 
lowered into a grave whilst a priest with a torch 
and book in his hands stands by, is particularly 
worthy of notice. At the east end of the chapel 
is a carved table of the Jacobean period. St 
Laurence's Chapel, where Laurence Shepey's 
chantry priest said Mass, is to the west of the 
last named. It contains a fine carved chest. 
The eastern extremity of the outer north aisle 
was the chapel of the Girdlers' Company, and 
the western part of the same aisle was the chapel 
of St Andrew, which was that of the Smiths' 
Company. It contains amongst other tombs one 

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of alabaster to William Stanley (ob. 1640) who 
was Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company 
in London, also another altar tomb to Julius 
Nethermyl, once Mayor of Coventry (ob. 1539), 
on which are figures of himself and wife, their 
five sons and five daughters. The font is 
believed to be that which was presented to the 
church in 1394 by John Crosse, at that time 
Mayor. Prior to the Reformation these chapels 
must have contained many fine works of art 
which were then swept away greatly to the 
benefit in some cases of those who cleared them 
off. Sir John Harington, in his " Brief View 
of the Church of England," 1 608, says, « The 
Pavement of Coventry Church is almost all 
Tombstones, and some very ancient; but there 
came a %ealous fellow, with a counterfeit com- 
mission, that for avoyding of superstition hath 
not left a penny-worth, nor one penny-bredth of 
brasse upon the Tombs, of all the inscriptions, 
which had been many and costly." And the 
MS. annals of the city, anno 1560, record — 
" This year Mass was put down, all Images and 
Popish reliques beaten down and burnt in open 
streets ; the Gospel preached freely." 

Amongst the vicars of this church may be 
mentioned John Vesey or Harman, LL.D., 
1507, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, and at one 
time Lord President of the Marches of Wales, 
who is buried in Sutton Coldfield Church, of 
which place he was a most munificent benefac- 
tor, and near which he died at the age of 103. 
Obadiah Grew, formerly master of the Free 
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School at Atherstone, vicar 1642, was the 
author of several minor works, but is more 
worthy of note as the father of Dr Nehemiah 
Grew, whose botanical works, "The Anatomy 
of Plants " and " The Physiological History of 
Plants," must always secure for him a leading 
position amongst the early teachers of that 
science. 

Holy Trinity Church is close to St 
MichaeFs, and is also, though not so large as 
the latter, a fine specimen of a parish church. 
The first mention of this church, according to 
Dugdale, is in 1259, when it was appropriated 
to the Priory, nor is there any evidence as to the 
date of its foundation. In 1391 the chancel is 
reported as being so ruined and decayed as to 
require rebuilding, which would seem to show 
that it had been in existence for a considerable 
time. However this may be, there is no part of 
the existing fabric which can safely be assigned 
to an earlier date than that of the taking over by 
the Priory. The spire was blown down in 
1665, damaging the church severely in its fall. 
The parishioners seem to have lost no time in 
taking steps for the repairing their loss, for on 
the very same day on which the accident took 
place, namely the 24th of January, a meeting 
was held, at which it was ordered that steps 
should be taken for getting together and laying 
aside the fragments, and for " amending all the 
breaches thereof with all speede possible." A 
year later a circular letter was issued by the 
vicar and several parishioners, of which a copy 
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is in the British Museum, narrating the injury 
done to the church, and adding that " it has left 
us but the carcasse of one of the goodHest and 
most ancient Parish Churches in these parts of 
England." They also state that ^^4000 is re- 
quired to repair and restore it, and that ^2^1 300 
had been laid out on the church in repairs since 
1654. In 1668 the MS. annals state that 
"Trinity Spire was finished, and built higher 
than it was before : the height from the Tower 
being 44 yards, the spindle of the Weathercock 
2 yards, and the Tower 33 yards, making the 
whole 79 yards." Mr Sharp remarks with 
respect to this spire that it was " injudiciously 
made to imitate St Michael's, including the 
beautiful octagonal second Tower ; but wanting 
the flying buttresses, and the depth of the win- 
dows and recesses of St Michael's Octagon, the 
Spire, though excellent, has the awkward appear- 
ance of being built upon two angles, without any 
advantage whatever arising from the attempted 
resemblance of its neighbour." The church is 
I 78 feet in length, and 67 feet in breadth ; it has 
a wooden roof restored in 1854, and a Perpen- 
dicular clerestory. A fresco of the Doom was 
discovered in 1831 over the west tower arch, 
but it has unfortunately so far faded as to be now 
unrecognisable. A number of chapels had a 
place in this church also. Commencing on the 
south side and at the west end, the first is that 
of the Barkers or Tanners, which extended up 
to the south transept which was the Jesus Chapel. 
It will be noticed from the position of the piscina, 
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which is above the line of the sill of the window, 
that this chapel must have been considerably 
above the level of the church. As a matter of 
fact, it was placed above an arched passage which 
formerly led into the churchyard. The next 
chapel, which occupied the south aisle of the 
chancel, was that of the Butchers. Beyond this 
is the vestry. On the opposite side of the choir 
and corresponding to the vestry is the choir vestry, 
formerly the chapel of Our Lady, for which as 
early as 1 364 the Guild of Corpus Christi agreed 
to find *' an able priest to sing Mass at the Altar 
of our blessed Lady, for the good estate of King 
Richard and Anne his Queen, the whole realm 
of England, and all those by whom the said 
Altar is sustained or amended, and for their souls 
after death." The Marlers' Chapel is north of 
the north chancel aisle, and was until recently 
.separated from the body of the church. It has 
under it a crypt which was used as the charnel- 
house. Up to a very recent date it contained 
the fragments of the celebrated window, men- 
tioned by Dugdale, who referred its erection to 
the time of Richard II. According to his 
account, it contained figures of Godiva and 
Leofric, the latter bearing in his hand a scroll 
inscribed — 

' ' I Luriche for the love of thee 
Doe make Coventre Tol-free." 

This window was over the south door, and all 
that remained of it were the heads of the Earl 
and Countess. This glass has, however, been 
recently riemoved with a view of placing it in 
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some other position. Beyond the north transept 
and between it and the porch was St Thomas' 
Chapel. The north porch, which is the most 
ancient part of the existing building, is vaulted, 
and has a parvise over it. The portion of the 
north aisle west of the porch is called the Arch- 
deacon's Chapel, and contains some interesting 
monuments. One of these is to Dr Philemon 
Holland (ob. 1636, set. 85), who was facetiously 
called by Fuller "the Translator Generall," a 
term which he richly earned, since his efforts in 
this direction included Camden's " Britannia," 
with additions "not found in the original," 
Plutarch's "Morals," Xenophon's "Cyropasdia," 
Pliny's " Natural History," Suetonius and Livy. 
The last is the achievement which he celebrated 
by the rhyme — 

" With one sole pen I wrote this book, 
Made of a grey goose-quill ; 
A pen it was when it I took, 
A pen I leave it still." 

"This monumental pen," says Fuller, "he 
solemnly kept, and showed to my reverend 
tutor, Dr Samuel Ward. It seems he leaned 
very lightly on the nib thereof, though weightily 
enough in another sense, performing not sHghtly, 
but solidly, what he undertook." There is also 
a brass of John Whithed, Mayor of Coventry in 
1 596, in his official robes, with his two wives, 
and two groups of children. 

The stone-pulpit is a very marked feature of 
the church ; it is placed against the south-east 
pillar of the tower which it partly encircles, and 
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with which it is probably coeval. The brass 
lectern is also most interesting, it being a very 
early example of a core casting. The first entry 
concerned with it is in 1560 (it is of course 
much older than that), when " xvjd " were 
expended "for mendyng of ye Eagle's tayle." 
During the reign of Puritanism it was in con- 
siderable danger, for there is an entry in the 
Vestry Book, under date 1654, 13 July. "Mr 
Abraham Watts made a motion, that whereas 
he was informed that this House had an intention 
to sell the brazen Eagle standing in the vestrie, 
that he might have the refusal thereof when such 
shall be mede. — Agreed, that if it be sold, he 
shall have the refusall thereof." The Font, 
which is perpendicular in character, and coloured 
after the indications of its original state, discovered 
when it was cleaned, stands upon two steps in 
the centre of the main aisle. At the time when 
the Eagle nearly passed into the hands of Mr 
Abraham Watts, the Font being considered 
objectionable, was removed, and it was ordered 
that a vessel should be provided to hold water 
for baptisms. On the Restoration, however, the 
old Font was brought back again and set up 
in what was probably its original position. As 
the visitor leaves the church he will notice, near 
the west door, a fine Elizabethan alms-box with 
carved shaft of support. Amongst the vicars of 
this church have been Nathaniel Wanley (in- 
stituted 1662), the author of a number of works, 
including a folio entitled, " The Wonders of the 
Little World," which Mr Sharp says is "a 
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work containing a vast assemblage of remarkable 
anecdotes, principally collected by extensive 
reading ; a few are comtemporary." Another 
better known name is that of Dr Hook, 1829- 
1837, afterwards Dean of Chichester, and author 
of the " Lives of the Archbishops of Canter- 
bury." Amongst the marriages recorded in the 
registers of this church, is that of Sarah Kemble 
with William Siddons. At the time that this 
took place the bride's father was managing a 
theatrical company which was performing at the 
Drapers' Hall. The Cathedral has almost 
entirely vanished, a few fragments alone marking 
its former situation. It was the Priory church 
of the Benedictine Monastery, and was the seat 
of a bishop from 1102 to 1188, when his chair 
was transferred to Lichfield, the see being for 
many years described as that of Lichfield and 
Coventry. At the Dissolution, great efforts 
were made to save this church, the Bishop, 
Rowland Lee, writing to Cromwell, and saying 
that "he was moved so to do, forasmuch as 
it was his principal see and head church, and 
that the City of Coventry sued for the same ; 
and so, earnestly entreated that the church might 
stand, and he keep his name, and the city have 
commodity and ease to their desire ; or that by 
his lordship's goodness it might be brought to a 
collegiate church, as Lichfield, and so his poor 
city have a perpetual comfort of the same." 
Cash down, however, as the history of other 
places proves, was the only argument capable of 
appealing to Cromwell and his master, and as 
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COVENTRY 

that was apparently not forthcoming, the Cathe- 
dral fell. The city has now once more a titular 
bishop, in the person of the Suffragan of the 
Bishop of Worcester, who is also Rector of St 
Philip's Church, Birmingham. The edifice 
which replaced the original Norman building 
appears to have been built on the same plan 
as the Cathedral at Lichfield. Some few 
remains of it are to be seen near Trinity Church 
and in the street called New Buildings, where 
the lower part of the north-west tower of the 
west front of the Cathedral can be seen. No- 
thing is left of the monastery, though its gate- 
way remained until the middle of the last century, 
when it was pulled down, and its site is now 
occupied by a public-house called the " Spotted 
Dog.'* Another public-house, "the Pilgrim's 
Rest," at the corner of Palmer Lane, is on the 
site of the Hospitium or Guest House of the 
Monastery. It bears a tablet with the following 
inscription : — 

"Upon this scite stood the western part of a. 
large and very ancient edifice called The 
Pilgrim's Rest. It was supposed to have 
been the hostel or inn for the maintenance 
and entertainment of the Palmers and other 
visitors to the Priory of Benedictine monks, 
which stood near to the Eastward. It 
became ruinous, and was taken down a.d., 
MDCccxx, when this house was erected." 

The visitor, when examining these relics of 
Leofric's foundation, should not fail to notice 

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Butcher's Row, which contains still a number of 
half-timbered houses. 

Christ Church, near the railway station, was 
the church of the Franciscans or Grey Friars, of 
whose monastic buildings its spire, 201 feet in 
height, the third of the "three tall spires of 
Coventry," is the only relic. The Franciscans 
appear to have settled in Coventry about 1234, 
and were the most active promoters of the annual 
Mystery plays. At the Dissolution the church 
was granted to the Mayor and Corporation, who 
used the nave and chancel as a stone quarry, the 
tower serving for a time as a pig-sty. In 1829 
a church was built on to it, which is no credit to 
the architectural taste even of that period. 

The Church of St John the Baptist or Bab- 
lake Church is situated in Fleet Street. Its site 
was given to the Guild of the same name by Isabel, 
"the she-wolf of France," and the church com- 
pleted in 1350. It was enlarged shortly after 
this date, but fell into a state of dilapidation after 
the Reformation, being used in 1648 as a place 
of confinement for the soldiers of the Scotch 
army under the Duke of Hamilton, who were 
defeated by Cromwell, at Preston. It was re- 
paired and made a parish church in 1774, and 
again restored in 1877. It is a cruciform 
building with central lantern tower, and a good 
window at the west end, of perpendicular type. 
The south or Walshman aisle is named after its 
founder William Walshman, valet to Queen 
Isabel. It forms part of a quadrangle of which 
another side is formed by Bahlake Old School, 
196 



COVENTRY 

though the school itself has been removed to 
another part of the city. It is a good half- 
timbered building founded by Thomas Wheatley, 
Mayor of Coventry in 1556. A third side of 
the quadrangle is occupied by Bond's Almshouse, 
founded in i 506, " for ten poore men, so long 
as the world shall endure, with a woman to look 
to them." The foundation now supports a con- 
siderably larger number of pensioners. It is also 
a half-timbered building, which has been freely 
restored, but which possesses elaborately carved 
barge-boards and headings to the windows. 

Another building which should by no means 
be missed is Ford's Almshouses in Grey Friars 
Lane. It is also half-timbered and has a most 
picturesque courtyard. The front of the build- 
ing which looks upon the Lane, is one of the 
most charming pieces of work of its kind to be 
seen anywhere in England. Other good half- 
timbered bouses are a gabled building with pro- 
jecting upper storeys ornamented with much 
carving, and of the time of Henry VII., in 
Pepper Lane, and another in Derby Lane. 
The Barracks now occupy the site of the old 
Black Bull Inn, where the Mayor entertained 
Henry VII. after the battle of Bosworth Field, 
and where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned 
for a time in i 569. The Carmelite Monastery 
or White Friars, near the station, is used as a 
workhouse. This order was introduced into 
Coventry in 1342, and a house was built for them 
by Sir John Poultney, who had been no less 
than four times Lord Mayor of London. After 
197 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

the Dissolution it was granted to Sir Ralph 
Sadler, who sold it to John Hales, who enter- 
tained Queen Elizabeth there at the time of her 
visit to the city of which some account has 
already been given. The gateway still remains, 
part of the cloister which is used as the dining 
hall, and the dormitory, still a place of sleep for 
the inmates. 



198 



T 



CHAPTER X 

EDGEHILL, COMPTON 
WYNYATES 

HE traveller who wishes to visit the fateful 
battle-field of Edgehill can do so easily 
from Kineton, which can be reached by train 
from Stratford-on-Avon by the East and West 
Junction Railway. Passing through the village 
of Kineton which need not detain him, he will 
take the high road to Banbury. Emerging into 
the open country, he will very shortly be close 
under the northern and steeper face of Edge- 
hill ; and the distinctness of its outline, which 
must have been more marked before it was 
somewhat obscured by the plantation of trees, 
will at onqe explain to him why it has received 
that name. He may remember as he passes 
along that the right of the Royalist forces and 
the left of the Parliamentarian lay across this 
road just as the battle was about to begin. The 
road winds up the side of the hill at a point 
callet Bullet Hill, the high ground on the left 
having been the point selected by Charles as a 
place from which to reconnoitre the opposing 
forces. It is now called the Crown, and is 
surmounted by a clump of trees. Arrived at the 
J99 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

top of the hill the traveller will keep along the 
road to the right, having on that side of him a 
long narrow plantation of trees, set there in the 
middle of the last century, which rather annoy- 
ingly interrupts the view of the valley until an 
inn is reached, provided with an mock-ancient 
tower, widely known as Ratley Roundhouse. 
Here is an excellent place from which to study 
the battle-field, for which purpose either the 
garden or, preferably, the top of the tower, may 
be selected. The tower, according to tradition, 
occupies the spot on which the King's banner 
was pitched on the day of the conflict. Beneath 
the eminence on which it is situated, the Vale 
of Red Horse lies extended to the view. This 
vale derives its name from the figure of a horse 
formerly cut in the red loam of the hill side, in 
the Tysoe district, and near the Sun-Rising of 
which more anon. " This memorial was," says 
Beesley, " said to have been originally cut in 
commemoration of Richard Neville, Earl of 
Warwick, who at the battle of Teuton, which 
was fought on Palm Sunday in 1461, plunged 
his sword in the breast of his horse when he 
found the army in eminent danger, and vowed 
to share that danger with the meanest of his 
soldiers. The battle was won, and the event 
was long afterwards commemorated at Edgehill 
by cleaning out the figure of the horse annually 
on Palm Sunday, some lands in the lordship of 
Tysoe being at one period held by this service. 
In allusion to the circumstance of the battle of 
Edgehill being fought in the Vale of Red Horse, 
200 



EDGEHILL 

a Parliamentarian writer says, * The Lord made 
the Red Horse of his wrath ride about most 
furiously to the ruin of our enemies.' " 

Looking down into the vale the following 
objects should be identified. On the lower 
slopes of the hill and sHghtly to the right of 
the spectator is a house built in the Tudor style, 
called Radway Grange, in one of the rooms of 
which, by the way. Fielding read Tom Jones 
from his manuscript to the Earl of Chatham. 
Close to this but rather further down is Radway 
Church. To the left of this is a narrow lane, 
probably of very ancient origin, which is called 
the Welsh Lane or King John's Lane, tradition 
stating that the monarch in question had a house 
of some kind at Kineton, where a probably Saxon 
earthwork is still called King John's Castle. Be- 
tween this lane and the church, but nearer to the 
former, is the spot on which Charles stood at 
the commencement of the battle. Following this 
road with the eye, it will be seen to pass on the 
left side of a triangular coppice, called Grave 
Ground Coppice, which marks the spot where 
500 of the dead were buried after the battle, 
800 others being interred in the neighbouring 
field. On either side of this coppice is a farm, 
that on the spectators' right being called Thistle 
Farm, that on the left Battle Farm. A line 
drawn through these two farms so as to connect 
them and to project for some distance on each 
side would fairly accurately indicate the position 
of the front of the Parliamentary forces at the 
beginning of the encounter. Beyond these farms 
201 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

will be seen the high road to Kineton and that 
village itself. It must not, however, be supposed 
that the present aspect of the ground, save in 
its main features, at all resembles that which 
it wore on the 23rd of October 1642. The 
farms were not then in existence nor was the 
country intersected by hedges, for all this part 
was then a common across which probably ran 
the track now known as King John's Lane. 
And the line of trees which crowns the crest 
of the hill was, as has been stated, only planted 
a little more than one hundred and fifty years 
ago. So much for that part of the scene which 
concerns the battle, but the distant view, which 
on a favourable day is most extensive, cannot fail 
to attract the attention of the visitor. It extends 
over the great midland plain bounded by the 
Malvern Hills on the west and the high ground 
of Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire on the 
east. The spires of Coventry, the tower of 
St Mary's at Warwick and the church wherein 
rest the remains of William Shakespeare are all 
parts of a panorama, which also includes, under 
favourable conditions, the towers of Worcester. 
But more will be said upon this point when 
speaking of the Sun Rising. 

The Battle of Edgehill. — The object of the 
King, who had raised his standard at Nottingham 
on August 22nd, 1642, was to march on London 
and secure its adhesion to his cause. With this 
in view he left Shrewsbury, where he had been 
stationed for some time, on the 1 2th of October 
and arrived at Edgecote House near Cropredy, 
202 



EDGEHILL 

a few miles from the scene of the battle, on the 
22nd. Here he was the guest of Mr Toby 
Chauncy, whilst his army, consisting of about 
14,000 foot and 4000 horse and dragoons, was 
encamped in the immediate vicinity. The Par- 
liamentary army had by this time reached Kineton 
and their object was to intercept the King and 
prevent his march upon London. They had 
not expected, however, to come so soon into 
conflict ; indeed Lord Essex, who was in com- 
mand, had intended to give his army a day's 
rest on the Sunday, October 23rd, whilst wait- 
ing for the arrival of further reinforcements. 
Rupert, however, who was stationed at Worm- 
leighton, three miles off, had stationed pickets on 
the Dasset hills, and on their report of the 
proximity of the enemy, the King abandoned 
his intended attack on Banbury and ordered art 
advance upon Edgehill. A part of the forces 
were in position by eight o'clock, and by their 
appearance on the crest of the hill gave the first 
intimation to Essex that his foe was at hand. 
The rest of the forces arrived a few hours after- 
wards and a strong position was taken up along 
the crest of the hill, the left lying near the Sun 
Rising, on the road from Stratford to Banbury, 
and the right at Bullet Hill, near the Kineton 
and Banbury Road. The Earl of Essex, whose 
numbers were two thousand or more inferior to 
those of the King, drew out his forces in a line 
with the two modern farms already mentioned, 
his left lying over the Banbury- Kineton road 
and his right close to a brook which eventually 
203 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

joins the Avon. The King is said to have 
breakfasted at a cottage just below the Round- 
house, now destroyed, after which he surveyed 
the enemy from a position somewhat lower down 
the hill. His forces were under the command 
of the Earl of Lindsey, to whom is attributed 
the prayer on the morning of the battle: — 
" O Lord ! Thou knowest how busy I must be 
this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget 
me. March on, boys ! " He and several other 
officers appear to have been anxious to await the 
enemy in the exceedingly strong position which 
they occupied, but the advice of Rupert and 
others prevailed, and it was decided to advance 
upon the foe. Rupert, whose subsequent con- 
duct largely contributed to the unsatisfactory 
result of the battle from the Royalist point of 
view, was at its very commencement a cause 
of difficulty. In Nugent' s Memorials it is 
stated that " a few days before this engagement, 
Prince Rupert, on receiving a message delivered 
by Lord Falkland, had declared that he would 
acknowledge no orders, in march or in battle, 
but from the King himself. This unmanage- 
able disposition of Rupert now forced on the 
King a very inconvenient arrangement ; since 
the Earl of Lindsey, the King's Lieutenant- 
General, saw that the Prince had disclaimed his 
control also. For the King to allow the line to 
be commanded by Rupert was impossible ; and 
a sort of compromise was therefore attempted. 
The King proposed that the order of battle 
should be formed by General Ruthven, who 
204 



EDGEHILL 

had served for some time in the same army 
with Rupert in Germany. To this Lindsey 
consented, putting himself on foot, at the head 
of the King's Guards, in the centre of the first 
Hne ; and thus remaining answerable for the 
fate of an army drawn out by another, and 
the whole right wing of which was com- 
manded by a rash man who would take no 
orders from him" (Beesley). The King rode 
along the lines clad in armour and wearing 
over it his Star and Garter on a black velvet 
mantle, a steel cap covered with velvet on his 
head. In his tent previously he had addressed 
his principal officers, concluding by assuring 
them, " Come life or death, your King will 
bear you company." At two o'clock in the 
afternoon the army commenced to descend the 
hill, Rupert commanding on the right and Lord 
Wilmot on the left, the King being a short dis- 
tance in the rear with the guard of pensioners. 
At three o'clock the engagement commenced, 
fire being opened by the Parliamentary artillery 
from their right flank. It is a local tradition 
that at this hour service was proceeding at Tysoe 
church, not far from Sun Rising. The clerk 
hearing the sound of the guns, exclaimed to the 
parson, " Ad dam 'em, they're at it ! " and rushed 
from the church, followed by the flock and 
their pastor. The Parliamentary fire was soon 
answered by that from the whole of the Royalist 
artillery, the King's cavalry of the left wing then 
charging the enemy suffered a repulse. On the 
opposite wing, however, Rupert with his cavalry 
205 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

completely routed those to whom they were 
opposed, and chased them to Kineton. This 
charge was preceded by a dramatic incident, for 
a party of the Parliamentary forces, under Sir 
Faithful Fortescue, discharged their pistols into 
the ground, and deserted to the opposite side, 
where, their intentions being misunderstood, 
about twenty-five of them were killed before 
an explanation could be given. Whether Sir 
Faithful had been pressed into the Parliamentary 
service or had joined it with the intention of 
deserting cannot be told, but the reception which 
he met with shows that his action was not 
pre-arranged with the Royalists. After having 
driven the troops opposed to him into Kineton, 
Rupert committed the fatal mistake of delaying 
for a whole hour, for the purpose of pillaging 
their baggage- waggons, an hour which, if other- 
wise spent, might have altogether altered the 
fortunes of the day. For during this time the 
King's infantry were attacked by the rest of the 
forces together, with such of the fugitive cavalry 
as had been able to reform, with the result that 
they were worsted and the Royal Standard cap- 
tured. Sir Edmund Verney, its bearer, being 
slain. By this time Hampden had arrived with 
reinforcements, hearing of which Rupert re- 
formed his troops, but whilst doing so lost 
several men, and was obliged to retreat in 
confusion to the King's army, whose right 
wing had been forced backwards and their 
place occupied by Parliamentary troops. The 
result of the battle was that though the 
206 



EDGEHILL 

Parliamentary forces held the field, the King 
retained the road to London, and, as a conse- 
quence, Banbury shortly afterwards yielded to 
him. 

The Royal Standard was recovered in a 
remarkable manner, for " one of the King's 
officers, Captain Smith, of the Lord John 
Stewart's troop, seeing the standard captured, 
threw round him the orange scarf of a fallen 
Parliamentarian, and, riding in among the lines 
of his enemies, told the secretary that * it were 
shame that so honourable a trophy of war should 
be borne by a penman.' To which suggestion 
the credulous guardian of this honourable trophy 
consenting, surrendered it to the disguised cava- 
lier, who galloped back with it amain, and, 
before evening, received knighthood under its 
shadow " (Beesley, from Nugent). Before 
leaving the subject of the battle, it should not 
be forgotten that there was on the field a far 
greater man than Rupert or Charles, in the 
person of William Harvey, then Physician in 
Ordinary to the King ; but memorable for all 
time as the discoverer of the circulation of the 
blood. He was in charge of the Prince of 
Wales and the Duke of York, and was with 
them at Knowle End during the combat. 
" During the action," says Nugent, " forget- 
ful both of his position and of his charge, and 
too sensible of the value of time to a philosophic 
mind to be cognisant of bodily danger, he took 
out a book, and sat him down on the grass to 
read, till warned by the sound of the bullets that 
207 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

grazed and whistled around him, he rose and 
withdrew the Princes to a securer distance." 

Cromwell was much blamed for not bringing 
up his troops to take part in this engagement, 
Denzil,Xord Holies, who was present at it in 
command of some of the Parliamentary reserves, 
stating that he was " as arrant a coward as he 
was notoriously perfidious, ambitious, and hypo- 
critical. This was his base keeping out of the 
field of Keinton, where he with his troop . of 
horse came not in, impudently and ridiculously 
affirming, the day after, that he had all that day 
been seeking the army and place of fight, though 
his quarters were at a village near at hand, whence 
he could not find his way, nor be directed by his 
ear, when the ordnance was heard for twenty or 
thirty miles off." 

On the Burton Dasset hills there is an old 
beacon tower from which the result of the 
conflict was signalled to London by way of 
Ivinghoe. 

The visitor who has time will find many 
points of interest in this neighbourhood, outside 
the scope of this book ; but he should, if pos-- 
sible, certainly not neglect to proceed somewhat 
further along the Banbury road to that from 
Stratford, where, on the edge of the hill, is a 
building, once an inn by the name of the Sun 
Rising, but now a private house, from in front 
of which he will obtain a most magnificent pro- 
spect. Besides the distant objects previously 
enumerated, on a clear day, the Clee hills, the 
high ground above Shrewsbury and the Wrekin 
208 



EDGEHILL 

can be seen, with Burton Dasset beacon and the 
field of battle in the foreground. 

CoMPTON Wyn YATES, about four or five miles 
from the Sun Rising, is one of the most beauti- 
ful and interesting of Warwickshire houses ; 
indeed, if area of comparison were extended to 
the whole kingdom, the statement could scarcely 
be called exaggerated. For many years com- 
paratively neglected by those in search of the 
picturesque, its fame was once more spread 
abroad by William Howitt, who included it in 
the list of remarkable places which he visited 
some forty or fifty years ago. What the word 
Wynyates may mean is a matter of some doubt, 
but it is stated that the word in the original 
documents referring to the place is " Vinegates," 
or "Vineyard," which from its situation is by 
no means improbable. According to Dugdale, 
it was at the time of Domesday Book, in the 
hands of Turchill de Warwick, who it will be 
remembered, was the builder, or at least the ex- 
tender, of the Norman castle, which preceded 
the present edifice at Warwick. The exact 
period at which it came into the possession of 
the Compton family is not known, some dating 
this back to the Norman period ; but, as Dug- 
dale points out, in the reign of King John, it 
was in the hands of Philip de Cumpton. It 
was, however, in the reign of Henry VIII., 
that the family, under the person of William 
Compton, came into notoriety. This gentleman 
was brought up with Henry, was his groom of 
the bedchamber, and established himself firmly 
o 209 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

in the monarch's favour. " Nay," says Dug- 
dale, "he quickly grew in such farther favour 
with that K., that he was the same year ad- 
vanced to be chief gentleman of his said bed- 
chamber ; and within three years after, in con- 
sideration of his good and faithfull service, had 
a special grant to himself and his heirs of an 
honourable augmentation to his arms, out of the 
said King's own royall Ensigns and Devises ; 
viz., a Lion passant gardant Or ; and for his 
Crest, a demi Dragon erased gules, ivith'tn a 
Coronet of gold, upon a torse Argent and vertJ^ 
In 1509 he determined to build a house at 
Compton Wynyates, and for that purpose pulled 
down another building at Fulbroke, which had 
been given to him by the King, and transported 
part of its materials, including some of the 
carved woodwork, to the new site. He was 
knighted for his conduct at the battle of the 
Spurs, in 15 13, and accompanied his Sovereign 
to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. During his 
lifetime Henry VIII. was entertained at Comp- 
ton Wynyates. His grandson, Henry, first 
Baron Compton, was visited by Queen Eliza- 
beth in the same house ; and dying, left a son 
William, about whom a well-known tale is told. 
He is said to have fallen in love with Elizabeth, 
the daughter of an exceedingly wealthy citizen, 
and former Lord Mayor of London, Sir John 
Spencer, who was, however, quite deaf to the 
appeals of the young couple. Love, as the 
poem would have us believe it always does, 
found out a way ; for Lord Compton, under 
210 



EDGEHILL 

the guise of the early morning baker, entered 
the house, and having got rid of the contents of 
his basket, filled their place by the lady herself. 
The story goes on to say that the father, meet- 
ing the young man on his way downstairs with 
his burden on his head, presented him with six- 
pence, and a commendation upon his earliness. 
However this may be, the couple were married 
and .promptly disinherited by the irate parent. 
Such an escapade was just the thing to please 
Queen Elizabeth, who determined to arrange 
matters, and called upon the merchant to be 
god-father to a child in whom she took an 
interest. The alderman was so delighted at this 
piece of royal condescension that he agreed to 
make it heir to the property which he had 
diverted from his daughter. Is it necessary to 
say that the happy babe turned out to be his 
own grandson ? The alderman's fortune is said 
to have amounted to ;^ 3 0,000, so that Lord 
Compton carried off a valuable prize in his 
basket of bread. He was created Earl of 
Northampton in 1618, by James I., who had 
visited his house in the previous year. His son 
Spencer, a firm adherent of Charles I., was 
killed at the battle of Hopton Heath, and left 
six sons. One of these, by name Henry, at 
first a soldier, afterwards became a clergyman, 
and was successively Canon of Christ Church, 
Bishop of Oxford, and Bishop of London. He 
educated, and afterwards officiated at the mar- 
riages of the Princesses Mary and Anne, was 
suspended from his episcopal functions by 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

James II., and took a leading part in the Re- 
volution. He crowned William and Mary, 
and finally retired from public life, disappointed, 
it is said, at not being made Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and died at Fulham in 171 3. The 
house was besieged in 1 664 by the Parliamentary 
forces, who finally captured it, taking therein the 
Earl's brother, 14 officers, and 120 soldiers. 
Besides these prisoners, £5000 in money, to- 
gether with horses, sheep, cattle, and eighteen 
loads of other plunder, were taken away. Dug- 
dale, in his Diary, writes, "The rebels, with 
400 foot and 300 horse, forced Compton House, 
drove the park and killed all the deer, and 
defaced the monuments in y® church." An 
attempt was made to retake it in the next year, 
but the Royalists, after having captured the 
stables, were driven off with considerable loss. 
The eighth Earl, as a result of gambling, and 
spending money over contested elections, at that 
date (1768) nearly as good a way of getting rid 
of money, so exhausted his patrimony, that it 
was found necessary to cut down the old timber 
and sell the furniture of the house, which subse- 
quently fell into a state of disrepair, so that 
Beesley, writing in 1841, states that, "the 
whole church is, as well as the house, in a very 
desolate and neglected state." It has since been 
repaired and refurnished. 

The house is partly built of stone, partly of 

brick, and partly is half-timbered, the stacks of 

brick chimneys forming a most picturesque part 

of the edifice. It is partly surrounded by a 

212 



EDGEHILL 

moat, which includes what is now a flower- 
garden on the site of buildings which have 
ceased to exist. A porch, whose gates are 
marked with bullet holes which tell of bygone 
combats, leads into a quadrangle, round which 
the present buildings are situated. This porch 
has above its entrance arch the arms of Henry 
VIII., with a crown on which is inscribed 
DoM. Rex. Henricvs. Octav. It is orna- 
mented with figures of lizards and other animals 
and roses, and its spandrels bear the cognisances 
of Katharine of Aragon, of her mother Isabella, 
and the portcullis, the Tudor badge. The first 
object to catch the eye in the inner court is a 
fine bay window, with mullioned windows and 
carved panels and battlements above. On the 
left of the entrance between two windows there 
is a stone lion's head, through which wine was 
poured on occasions of rejoicing. The house 
contains ninety rooms, of which a few must be 
specially mentioned. The hall is of the height 
of the house, and has an open timber roof. On 
the panels of the room will be seen the Compton 
arms, with the lion granted to its owner by 
Henry VIII. There is a minstrel gallery and 
a second gallery of modern date. A huge table 
for the game of shuffle-board should be noticed. 
The private dining-room has a plaster ceiling of 
Elizabethan date. The great staircase leads to 
the upper rooms, one of which was occupied by 
King Charles, and is called after him. It con- 
tains an old oak bedstead, and has a spiral stair- 
case connected with it, which leads on the one 
213 



SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

hand to the moat, and on the other to the upper 
rooms. The drawing-room is panelled with 
oak, and has a restored plaster ceiling of the 
Elizabethan period. Over the mantel-piece is 
the Douglas crest, a wild boar in the cleft of an 
oak tree, bound with a chain and lock, and with 
the motto, " Lock Sicker." The bedchamber 
of Henry VIH. has some old glass, in which 
the Tudor rose is to be seen as well as the arms 
of Katharine of Aragon. The ceiling contains 
the arms of different monarchs who have visited 
the house. Near this is another room, from 
which a hiding-place above is reached by a 
narrow staircase, and there is a second secret 
chamber in the south-west turret. The council 
chamber in the Great Tower is panelled with split 
oak, and has, in an adjoining closet, a well hole, 
which probably led to another secret chamber. 
Three staircases lead from this room to the 
Priest's chamber in the roof, where the services 
of the Catholic Church were performed when 
proscribed by law. This room contains a most 
interesting relic in the shape of a shelf under the 
south-west window, on which are carved five 
crosses in the positions which they would occupy 
on an altar slab. This shelf cannot actually 
have been a consecrated altar, not being of stone, 
but it was doubtless the spot on which the port- 
able altar-stone was laid during the celebration of 
Mass, and was consequently marked in this way. 
It is believed to be the only object of its kind 
in the country. This room also contains a carved 
door of Renaissance work and a recess behind 
214 



EDGEHILL 

the fire-place, which may well have been a priest's 
hiding-place. The barracks or soldiers' quarters, 
now divided into separate rooms, was originally 
one long room immediately under the roof, whose 
timbers can here be seen. The marks of burns 
on the woodwork are said to have been caused 
by the candles which the soldiers stuck about in 
different places. At the end of the barracks is 
the chamber occupied by the captain on duty 
with the guard. The chapel, which is on the 
ground floor, has a door opening into it from 
above, so that those in an upper room, called the 
chapel drawing-room, could take part in the ser- 
vice without descending to the lower floor. It 
is divided into two parts by an oak screen pro- 
vided with a central gate. The carvings on this 
screen are of ancient date, and it is probable that 
it was part of the material brought from Ful- 
broke. The great window was formerly occupied 
by fine old glass, figured by Dugdale, which was 
removed to Baliol College, Oxford, during the 
Civil War, and is now partly in the chapel and 
partly in the library of that society. An ancient 
dove-cot in the grounds should be noticed before 
the house is left. 

The church was built by the third Earl on 
the site of an earlier building in 1663, a date 
which will be seen on one of the leaden spouts 
of the tower. It is an interesting specimen of 
seventeenth-century imitative Gothic with classic 
details curiously intermixed, and consists of two 
parallel naves of equal length and width divided 
by an arcade of four well-proportioned arches. 
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SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY 

The roofs are of waggon-head form, plastered, 
and are painted with sky and clouds, one with 
the sun to represent day, the other with moon and 
stars to represent night. It contains amongst 
other monuments to the family the tombs which, 
as Dugdale states, were broken during the Civil 
War. They were thrown into the moat, and 
removed to the church when rebuilt after the 
Restoration. The centre figure on the north 
side is Sir William Compton, the builder of the 
house, who is represented as wearing the collar 
of Saints with a Tudor rose. 



INDEX 



Abbot's Salford, 8i. 

yEthelflaed, 83. 

Alauna, 67. 

Alcester, 67. 

Almshouses (Stratford), 29. 

Arden, Forest of, i. 

Arden, Mary, 4. 

Arms, Grant of, to Shake- 
speare, 7. 

Arras Tapestry at Coventry, 
181. 

Aston Cantlow, 49. 



B 



Balshall, T., 32. 
Bancroft Gardens, 39. 
Barnard, Sir J., 12. 
Beauchamp Chapel, 99. 
Beaudesert, 64. 
Bengeworth, 75. 
Bertwald, 67. 
Bidford, 60. 
Billesley, 53. 

Birmingham, relation to Cov- 
entry, 79. 
Birthplace, Shakespeare's, 13. 
" Black Dog of Arden," 85. 
Blacklow Hill, 85, 123. 
Brady, Nicholas, 46. 
Brayz, The, 139. 
Broadway, 75. 
Broom, 60. 



Cage, The, 17. 
Charlecote, 54. 



Charles I., King sat Coventry, 
165 ; at Edgehill, 202. 

Charnel-house at Stratford, 33. 

Chipping Camden, 78. 

Child's Fountain, 45. 

Clifford Chambers, 63. 

Clopton Chapel, 31. 

House, 56. 

Sir Hugh, 25,31. 

Compton, Bp. H., 212. 

Lord, 211. 

Wynyates, history, 209.; 

house, 212 ; church, 215. 

Coughton, 68. 

Coventry, history, 155 : Gates, 
160; Siege by Charles I., 165 ; 
Guilds, 167 ; Mysteries, 173; 
St Mary's Hall, 177 ; tapes- 
try, 181; St Michael's Church, 
183 ; Holy Trinity Church, 
189 ; remains of Cathedral, 
194 ; of Monastery, 195. 

Christ Church, 196 ; St John's 
Baptist Church, 196 ; Bond's 
Almshouses, 197 ; Ford's 
Almshouses, 197 ; Carmelite 
Monastery, 197. 



Dombey, Mr, at Leamington, 

117. 
Dubritius, S., 83. 
Dudley, Ambrose, 86, 103. 

Robert, 105, 133. 

Sir Robert, 136, 153. 



Ecguin, Bp., 67, 70. 
Edgehill, 200 ; battle of, 202. 



INDEX 



Elizabeth, Q., at Coventry, 163 ; 

at Kenilworth, 134, 147 ; and 

Lord Compton, 211. 
Evesham, 70 ; battle of, 71. 
Exhall, 59. 



" Falcon," Tavern at Bidford, 

15, 16, 61. . 
Feldon, The, i. 



Garrick, portrait of, 18. 
Gastrell, Rev. F., 19. 
Gaveston, Piers, 85, 124. 
Godiva, 155, 192. 
Grafton, Temple, 53, 58. 
Grammar School, Stratford, 28. 
Green, Thomas, 19. 
Greville, Sir Fulke, 86, 98. 

Family, 68, 79, 80, 86, 98. 

Grew, Obadiah, 188. 
Guild Chapel, Stratford, 23. 
of Holy Cross, Stratford, 

23- 

Hall, Stratford, 26. 

■ Aston Cantlow, 10. 

Guilds, Coventry, 167. 
Guy of War wick, 91, 118. 
Guy's Cliff, 118. 



H 



Hall, Dr, 12 ; his house, 29 ; his 

tomb, 37. 
Harvard House, 17. 
Harvey, Wm., 207. 
Hathaway, Anne, 9 ; cottage, 

48 ; tomb, 36. 

Richard, 9, 47. 

Thomas, 21. 

Henley-in-Arden, 64. 
Hickes, Sir Baptist, 79. 
Hillborough, 59. 
Hoby, Sir P., 71, 8t. 
Holland, Philemon, 192. 
Hooke, Dean. 



" Impe, The Noble," 107. 
Irving, Washington, 46. 



J 



Jago, R., 51. 

Janssen or Johnson, G., 34. 

JolyfFe, T., 29. 



K 

Kenilworth, pageants, 8, 134 
Castle, 133 ; Ban of, 73, 129, 
160 ; Siege, 129 ; Queen Eliza 
beth at, 134 ; Church, 148 
Priory, 149. 

" King Maker, The," 86. 



Landor, birthplace, 5. 
Laneham, 134. 
Leamington, 116. 
Lichfield, Abbot, 71. 
Lindsey, Earl of, 87, 204. 
Lucy Family, 54, 
Luddington, 51. 



M 

Malone, 35. 
Marston, 58. 

Mary Queen of Scots at Cov- 
entry, 164, 182. 
Memorial Theatre, Stratford, 

Middle Hill, 78. 

Montford, Simon de, 71, 128. 

Motstow Hill, 154. 

Mulberry Tree, Shakespeare's, 

19. 
Mystery Plays, Coventry, 173. 
Mytton, Jack, at Leamington 

T17. 



2l8 



INDEX 



Nash, Thomas, 12 ; house, 20 

tomb, 37. 
New Place, 18. 



Ophelia, 57. 
Osburg, S., 155. 



Parliamentum Diabolicum, 161. 

Indoctorum, 161. 

Pebworth, 58. 

Peeping, Tom, 158. 

Portraits of Shakespeare, Hunt, 
15 ; Droeshout, 41 ; Chandos, 
42 ; Davenant bust, 43. 



Quiney, R., 
T., 12 



II, 16. 



Radway Grange, 205. 
Ratley Round House, 200. 
Red House, The, 200. 
Robsart, Amy, 86, 133, 143, 

145, 146. 
Rous, Geoffrey, 121. 
Rupert, Prince, 204. 



Sandells, Fulk, g.^ 
" Seven Ages," Windows, Strat- 
ford, 33. 
Shakespeare, Elizabeth, 12. 

Hannah, 10, 11. 

-r— Henry, 50. 

John, 4. 

Judith, 10, 12, 17. 

Richard, 3. 

Susannah, 9 ; tomb, 37. 



Shakespeare, William, birth, 5 ; 
wife, S ; birthplace, 13 ; New 
Place, 18 ; monument, 34 ; me- 
morial, 38. 

Shaw, Julius, 21. 

Sheldon Court, 77. 

Shottery, 47. 

Sly, Christopher, 49. 

Snitterfield, 50. 

Somerville, Author of "The 
Chase," 67. 

Stare Bridge, 152. 

Stoneleigh, 150. 

Stratford, History, 2 ; Birth- 
place, 13 ; The Cage, 17 ; 
Harvard House, 17 ; Town 
Hall, 17 ; New Place, 17 ; 
Nash's house, 20; Shaw's 
house, 21 ; Guild Chapel, 23 ; 
Guild Hall. 26; Grammar 
School, 28 ; Hall's Croft, 29 ; 
Trinity Church, 30; Shake- 
speare Memorial, 38. 



Trinity Church, Stratford, 30. 
"Taming of the Shrew," 49, 58. 
Tapestry at Coventry, 181. 
Temple Grafton, 53, 58. 
Throckmorton Family, 69. 



Vale of Red Horse, 200. 



W 

Warwick, History, 83 ; Castle. 
86 ; Church of St Nicholas^ 
94 ; St John's Hospital, 95 ; 
Eastgate, 95 ; Church of St 
Mary, 96 ; Leycester's Hos- 
pital, III ; Priory, 115 
School, 115. 

Welford, 8c. 

Wilnecote, 48. 

Wixford, 59. 

Wooland, The, i. 

Wootton Wawen, 65. 



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